Today is our one year anniversary of the launch of UnionVGF. Holy cow, has it really been a year? I can remember hovering the mouse over the purchase domain name button unsure if I should do it, for minutes. I even walked away from the computer because I was so unsure. I knew I couldn't put the effort into keeping TeamXbox afloat anymore. Everyone saw how quick it went to hell. I loved our community and I couldn't see us disintegrate.
With starting up a new site I knew there would be a lot of responsibility that came with it. Would people follow? Would I be able to support it like the community deserved? Would I know what the hell I was doing?! It was a major decision because Union would become a major part of my life if I gave it a go. I couldn't do it half assed. If I was going to do it I was going to do it right. Well, obviously, I decided to click on the purchase domain name button and here we are.
The first day of Union was a whirlwind. I was learning on the fly to get everything up that first day. I started at 7:45am and we were posting by 10am. There were many a sleepless night those first few weeks. I was always finding something I could tweak and I had to keep an eye on everything to make sure the site didn't explode into oblivion. It consumed me for a good three weeks straight with very little sleep. I say it wasn't until mid October when I began to feel comfortable not checking the site every second, refreshing, making sure it was all running well. I've reduced it to every minute now!
When I decided to start Union I primarily wanted a place where the 50 or so of us that were still active, daily, at TeamXbox, to continue how we were going along. As the days went on, and the membership continued to grow with old TeamXbox members I hadn't seen in a while, I decided to open it up to the public. What started as me thinking that the only people on the site would be the TeamXbox survivors, it turned into over 900 members as of today. That's beyond my wildest expectations. Obviously there aren't that many active continually, but, since I approved members manually, all the registered members are actual people. No bots here. One did sneak through after some heavy vetting, but I got it quick.
In one year of being online, Union has nearly 5000 threads and over 225,000 posts. Below are the statistics from mid-October until today. I didn't start tracking stats until mid-October. Never did I think we would have a website that would have one tenth the traffic this site has. I have very little to compare it to but I really like seeing the numbers over the course of the year and see when the traffic is at its peak and when it's lowest.
Our community is something that is very rare from my experiences at other forums . While we have fans of many consoles here, some pretty passionate about it, we're respectful of each other, for the most part, and carry on without much of a problem with one another. Sometimes arguments arise, but, in the end, we all seem to be OK with each other. There have been a few casualties, they're the exception, not the norm, and, overall, it's been rather mundane compared to other forums. The super mods and new forum mods have been doing a great job to help keep everything running smoothly and this site wouldn't be functioning without them. I think all of you!
A few thought Union wouldn't last more than a couple months. Some hoped it wouldn't last at all. I hope they're all wrong. I love what we have here. I enjoy interacting with all of you on a daily basis, even those I don't see eye to eye with sometimes. It breaks up the mundane routine of everyday life nicely.
Finally, thank YOU for helping make the first year of Union a successful one. Without the community's support the site wouldn't have made it to its one year anniversary. One thing is for certain, the more we post, there is more unknown. Here's hoping for many more years to come...
Thank you everyone for being here.
Plainview
A look at how the site first looked when launched. Unfortunately I didn't keep a screenshot of the very first day, but this is the default style we launched with.
Site statistics.
[USERGROUP=2]Registered[/USERGROUP]
[USERGROUP=12]Forum Moderator[/USERGROUP]
[USERGROUP=4]Super Moderator[/USERGROUP]
With starting up a new site I knew there would be a lot of responsibility that came with it. Would people follow? Would I be able to support it like the community deserved? Would I know what the hell I was doing?! It was a major decision because Union would become a major part of my life if I gave it a go. I couldn't do it half assed. If I was going to do it I was going to do it right. Well, obviously, I decided to click on the purchase domain name button and here we are.
The first day of Union was a whirlwind. I was learning on the fly to get everything up that first day. I started at 7:45am and we were posting by 10am. There were many a sleepless night those first few weeks. I was always finding something I could tweak and I had to keep an eye on everything to make sure the site didn't explode into oblivion. It consumed me for a good three weeks straight with very little sleep. I say it wasn't until mid October when I began to feel comfortable not checking the site every second, refreshing, making sure it was all running well. I've reduced it to every minute now!
When I decided to start Union I primarily wanted a place where the 50 or so of us that were still active, daily, at TeamXbox, to continue how we were going along. As the days went on, and the membership continued to grow with old TeamXbox members I hadn't seen in a while, I decided to open it up to the public. What started as me thinking that the only people on the site would be the TeamXbox survivors, it turned into over 900 members as of today. That's beyond my wildest expectations. Obviously there aren't that many active continually, but, since I approved members manually, all the registered members are actual people. No bots here. One did sneak through after some heavy vetting, but I got it quick.
In one year of being online, Union has nearly 5000 threads and over 225,000 posts. Below are the statistics from mid-October until today. I didn't start tracking stats until mid-October. Never did I think we would have a website that would have one tenth the traffic this site has. I have very little to compare it to but I really like seeing the numbers over the course of the year and see when the traffic is at its peak and when it's lowest.
Our community is something that is very rare from my experiences at other forums . While we have fans of many consoles here, some pretty passionate about it, we're respectful of each other, for the most part, and carry on without much of a problem with one another. Sometimes arguments arise, but, in the end, we all seem to be OK with each other. There have been a few casualties, they're the exception, not the norm, and, overall, it's been rather mundane compared to other forums. The super mods and new forum mods have been doing a great job to help keep everything running smoothly and this site wouldn't be functioning without them. I think all of you!
A few thought Union wouldn't last more than a couple months. Some hoped it wouldn't last at all. I hope they're all wrong. I love what we have here. I enjoy interacting with all of you on a daily basis, even those I don't see eye to eye with sometimes. It breaks up the mundane routine of everyday life nicely.
Finally, thank YOU for helping make the first year of Union a successful one. Without the community's support the site wouldn't have made it to its one year anniversary. One thing is for certain, the more we post, there is more unknown. Here's hoping for many more years to come...
Thank you everyone for being here.
Plainview
A look at how the site first looked when launched. Unfortunately I didn't keep a screenshot of the very first day, but this is the default style we launched with.
Site statistics.
[USERGROUP=2]Registered[/USERGROUP]
[USERGROUP=12]Forum Moderator[/USERGROUP]
[USERGROUP=4]Super Moderator[/USERGROUP]
