2015 has been a busy year. We’ve upgraded the mailserver, and the webserver, and had to move our mail to a third party when it reached 25,000 mails a week and our host complained.
As a club this made money rather tight, so we moved to RiotAds, which unfortunately was a duff move as the video ads broke the page site. From October, RiotAds were replaced by direct sponsorships from authors, and the site is running better for it. (Thanks to RA for building us the solution).
We ran a newspaper column reviewing indie books in the Caterham and District Gazette from Jan until June, and now have space for a larger column in the Croydon Citizen until June 2016.
We’re on Patreon, and DailyMotion, and with luck next year might find our way onto Google and Youtube.
Which means we now have a lot to look forward to in 2016.
The club boards (bbpress and phpBB) will be replaced with a public one linked to the site which makes it easier to discuss reviews, and might have a few extra features for members (e.g. “Reader reviews Romance”: there’s a reason she doesn’t put many romance reviews on the site – we’ve seen her tirades at the club!, or review notes from our chats, and some of our resource lists for authors).
The database will get another upgrade, planned before 2016, which should head of future problems if the site grows.
The search is a to-do, as we’ve outgrown relevanssi and the wordpress search isn’t very good. It looks like we may have to buy a commercial option, which is currently subject to funds and we’re cringing a bit at the price.
And of course, the planned upgrade to a responsive and tablet-friendly theme. Which will be a lot of work and depends on the coders’ availability (as they volunteer in spare time, we’re grateful for all the help).
And the long-awaited sister sites, including bargainbookangel for 99p books are now in beta and will be going live early in the new year.
So, Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and to all many good books and a great reading year!
