Happy Birthday Jack!

Today is the 7th of September. That means two things. First, it means that this site is now exactly one year old! As it's September, that also means that it is Jack Daniels' birthday as well. The exact date of his birthday is unknown, lost to a courthouse fire, but it is known to be in September. Thus, Jack lovers everywhere are celebrating for the whole month. Check out your local pubs - you might find hip flasks, t shirts, and even free Jack Daniels on offer.

Since starting the site, I've posted 63 articles. Not bad going, though I have posted more sporadically than I would like. Those articles have been read 73752-odd times, which is probably a far higher figure than it should be. There have been 57 comments - less than I would have liked, but I have spent a lot of time experimenting with the comment system here, trying to find better ways to encourage participation. It's my writing style and content that have kept the comments low, though, which I can live with for now.

There's been one redesign in the last year, which I am still tweaking and improving. There's another on the way, too. Now I'm reasonably happy with the operation of the site, it's time to clean up the code and create a nicer front end. I've also got to start documenting the many changes I've made to the vanilla bBlog installation, to allow things like proper URLs and pagination. All in good time though.

It's not been like me to make this kind of more personal post. I tend to write about web design, development and so on, because that's what this site was originally for. The addition of an actual blog section to the site is something I'm weighing up, though, as every so often I find myself wanting to rant, or just share something interesting, and it's about time I gave that a good shot. The question is whether I can keep up the level of interesting content to make a blog worthwhile.

Finally, thanks to you, the reader. Without the encouragement I've received, and without knowing there are people that read this site, I'd probably find it hard to keep motivating myself to write.

So Happy Birthday Jack, and Happy Birthday to this site. Here's to another good year.