Southern York County Life

Stewartstown.com turns one year old

It’s hard to believe, but November marks one year since Stewartstown.com began its electronic life. We’ve changed during that time, but the goal of helping to bring our community together is still our driving mission.

Here are some high points of year one:

November 22, 1999 - It all begins with only a few pages published.

November 26, 1999 - First site visitor. Great rejoicing and celebration ensues…

December 18, 1999 - Can it be? We finish our first 100 visitor week.

February 20, 2000 - Free publicity! York Sunday paper mentions Stewartstown.com due to links to Stewartstown/Hopewell merger information. Traffic tops 200 visitors per week for a few weeks then settles to about 150 per week.

July 4, 2000 - Boredom sets in, so we completely redesign Stewartstown.com.

July 29, 2000 - Guess we should get bored more often. Site traffic reaches a sustained 300 visitors per week.

Total home page visitors to date - over 12000

Total page views to date - 60000 (not counting forums or email accounts which average about 4000 page views per week).

It’s been fun, and I thank all of you who visit the site, send events and articles, and tell your friends. This site is meant to serve you, and without your help, it would have just withered away.

Want to help even more?

Maintaining a community website that continues to have new and interesting content is time-consuming. Would you like to lighten my load? I’m looking for people willing to help make this site even more useful. There are several things you can do:

1. Events - Send me information about any events you know about that would be of interest to Stewartstown area residents. If you know folks that are part of schools, non-profit organizations, community events, churches, etc., tell them to get their events listed here. The more who participate, the more useful it will become.

2. Articles - Do you have writing ability and want to get published? I’m looking for articles about anything that might interest area residents. Most important are news and events articles, but other topics are also welcome. There’s no pay (hey, at least I don’t ask you to share in the cost!), but you will get credit in the byline for accepted submissions.

3. Tell Your Friends - I’ve put a “Spread the Word” form on the home page to make this easier. By the way, the information entered on the form is only used to process the automatic email to your friend and then discarded.

4. Feedback - Tell me what you like and don’t like about Stewartstown.com. Let me know of ideas you have. I have made a number of changes based on your feedback.

Next year Stewartstown will officially be 150 years old! Our history as a community goes back even further. Communication methods have multiplied during that time, yet paradoxically it sometimes seems that we actually communicate less. My hope is that this website contributes to increasing the amount and quality of our interactions, while providing useful information to all residents.

Posted by Dan Baldwin on 11/16/2000 at 03:01 PM in News

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