As hard as I have worked on the new site, It still pains me to see the old one gone…. Right now It’s 3am, and I’m writing up the post ready for the big move (yes I can do that now and set this thing to automatically post up when I’m not here) .

I’ve worked very hard on making sure this site is near enough what you all wanted it to be, and me. You can still see the clouds in the background image, just like in the old site. And despite a few additional features and colour changes, It’s not a huge difference to the old one.  I still want this site to be all me. Hopefully all those survey results better work out

We have a host of new features, me being able to post from my phone, a better gallery system, a more efficient site, RSS feeds for those who want a mailing list but don’t want to be on a mailing list, twitter linkins (this site will twitter whenever I post an update), comments (with spam protection I might add). There’s even a download section which hasn’t gone live yet, but it’s there, ready to be tweaked. Though I may only enable it for registered users. Categories and tags, better stats tracking, there’s just so much that I’ve been able to accomplish with the site. Even getting it optimized so that mobile viewers have their own dedicated site (though the gallery doesn’t yet work on it… hopefully that will be fixed soon, but you now have the option to comment and post up your thoughts and views! so go right ahead!

Still.. welcome to the site… I hope you enjoy using it as much as I have had creating it (minus the frustration and hair pulling)

In 2006, thelongmile.net was born.

It was bland, and there is no doubt about that, but since then, you’ve helped it grow tremendously.

I’ve just completed the reports on the page counts for 2006, 2007 and 2008, and thanks to you, since this site began, thelongmile.net has been visted

153,512 times. Yes. One Hundered and Fifty Three Thousand, Five Hundered and Twelve Times.

Of those hits, 5,559 were unique, which means 147,953 are returning visitors.

This means on average thelongmile.net 186.53 hits per day and just over 2 new people visiting every week, and it’s increasing every day.

I just wanted to say a huge thank you not only to the new people who are joining this site, but to those that are coming back and supporting me through my journey, but also to my Hosting Provider, BuyHTTP who has provided this site with tremendous support, ran with rock solid reliability and answered every query I’ve thrown at them politely, quickly and above all else, they’ve managed to fix every problem I’ve had. I simply could not have supported this site, or given this experience to you, the visitors, without them. And I simply would not have been able to do any of this, without you the visitors, and everyone who has supported and assisted in development with thelongmile.net

Thank You