State of the Site 7-9-2013

[Drew Dowdell]

July 7th, 2013 - State of the Site

This will be less a "State of the Site" and more a "State of Drew".

As you know, I haven't been around as much lately. Work has kept me on the road all year up until recently.

From mid-February till late May I was battling constant colds and exhaustion to the point where my doctor told me that I had to knock off my work schedule or face more serious illness.

From mid-May till the end of this week, I have been missing two of my staff at my day job who have been out for medical reasons (lucky them!).

Since Mid-July, my work travel is done until end of August, so I finally have had the chance to catch up on things at home and recuperate a bit.

Starting Monday, I will be back up to full staff at work and finally be able to clear out the backlog there while possibly coming home less exhausted than I do now.

So enough about me and on to the state of C&G

Operations

1. Server - Our server was good until mid-May when a power outage cause drives to fail and a site rollback.
2. Our server took another 36 hour power outage in June that did further damage.
3. Our host has credited us with 2 months worth of service and will be moving us to a new data center on new, faster hardware.
4. During the data-center move, there will be a short outage as IP Addresses change. I will try and put up a "We're Moving" page during this time.
5. Software - We're now two revisions behind on our IP.Board software. I will be holding off on upgrades until after the datacenter move.
6. Look and Feel - The new look is still on the drawing board but on hold until the new major version of IP Board 4.0 is released. We are currently on 3.4.3

Site Ranking

In spite of the reduced posting lately, our traffic has not suffered dramatically outside of the outages we've had. We still rank fairly well in search terms and have maintained our status with the search engines.

In the prior update I mentioned that I found that Google was reporting over 200k broken links to C&G. I installed a fix to address this issue and Google has now cleared up most of them.

Auto Shows, Articles, Blogs

It is only mid-July and here I am planning for the auto show season already. Frankfurt is just a few months away and this year I am going to attempt to time my normal Germany pilgrimage to match the show dates. I have also been invited to a Corvette tour at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix which I will both be covering and showing my own car in.

I have a backlog of about 7 reviews to write and a whole bunch of Op-Ed style articles in the pipeline. I started writing again for the first time in months in a blog post here. I feel a bit out of practice and had to re-open that post for editing about a dozen times to fix things I found wrong. Consumer Guide did us a nice favor and posted a link to that blog post on their Facebook page. They're good people over there and I had a good time taking Tom to task for his list. I will be blogging in that style more often now, so watch those pages for updates.

Comment on blogs often please.. or even start your own.

I plan to write my Op-Ed pieces first before I start back on the reviews, but I see that William has submitted two reviews for approval this week, so that should hold you over.

Advertising

Something in the advertizing system is broken, it is no longer showing the right ads. That is on my to-do list for this week to fix.

The Biggest News

I started legal process to make Cheers and Gears its own company on June 1st. I am in the final stages with the lawyer there and hope to have a final announcement in a week or two. C&G will fall under my consulting business that I plan to expand in the coming months with the eventual intention of consulting and C&Ging full time. There will be potential for some paid, part-time positions with C&G once I have things finalized.

[regfootball]

sounds good. congrats, glad you are doing better.

[daves87rs]

Sounds good!

And get some rest!

[G. David Felt]

Your plans Drew sound awesome. You have done an amazing job, please take a few days to truly have some Drew Days to yourself. Nothing wrong with being a bit selfish in needing some personal time to veg, go do something special with someone or just take that well deserved mental break.

If there is anything I can do, please just ask.

Thank you for all you have done.

[William Maley]

Auto Shows, Articles, Blogs

It is only mid-July and here I am planning for the auto show season already. Frankfurt is just a few months away and this year I am going to attempt to time my normal Germany pilgrimage to match the show dates. I have also been invited to a Corvette tour at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix which I will both be covering and showing my own car in.

I have a backlog of about 7 reviews to write and a whole bunch of Op-Ed style articles in the pipeline. I started writing again for the first time in months in a blog post here. I feel a bit out of practice and had to re-open that post for editing about a dozen times to fix things I found wrong. Consumer Guide did us a nice favor and posted a link to that blog post on their Facebook page. They're good people over there and I had a good time taking Tom to task for his list. I will be blogging in that style more often now, so watch those pages for updates.

Comment on blogs often please.. or even start your own.

I plan to write my Op-Ed pieces first before I start back on the reviews, but I see that William has submitted two reviews for approval this week, so that should hold you over.

The Biggest News

I started legal process to make Cheers and Gears its own company on June 1st. I am in the final stages with the lawyer there and hope to have a final announcement in a week or two. C&G will fall under my consulting business that I plan to expand in the coming months with the eventual intention of consulting and C&Ging full time. There will be potential for some paid, part-time positions with C&G once I have things finalized.

Now you got wanting to blog pieces again.. Have some ideas that I need to take some time and begin writing.

Also, I have more reviews on the way.. and a upcoming first drive.

[justusforus]

Sounds like you have a to do list, but enjoy the site and participating. With the "challenges" (I prefer to be more optimistic in my phrasing) and keeping the traffic, that's a great sign. There are some very interesting contributions here and I know I will keep coming back. All the best.