Allpar current status
Allpar is currently serving roughly 700,000 IP addresses per month with over 2.6 million page views (not including forums) and 1.1 million visits. Our peak by far was in January 2006 with 900,000 unique IPs and a stunning 3.7 million page views. (All stats are from Webalizer which tends to not agree with Summary). Total bandwidth used in March exceeded 63 gigabytes.
Allpar currently has a number of services including the registry (about 650 vehicles but we really needed to triple that number, at least), forums, news, weblogs, barely-functional classifieds, links, 200,000 Mile Club, and probably more that I’m temporarily forgetting.
We have eliminated popups entirely - or should have, anyway - and no longer use our old-time ad agencies. We started out with a single $20/month banner ad many years ago, and were alternately sponsored by Year One and an auto classifieds site; we were given an offer we could not refuse ($7.50 CPMs!) by About.com; when they collapsed as an ad agency we went to DoubleClick; and when they proved to be too sleazy, TribalFusion and FastClick, then Google. The goal has always been to raise not just the relatively minor sum to keep the server going (once that was $400/month, now it’s $220 including daily backups), but also to pay for the webmaster to take time off work. It’s hard to have a part-time career…
Allpar recently passed 1,200 “static” (relatively unchanging, hard-coded) pages, assembled over the course of 12 years, from the days when we were at http://www.mordor.com/valiant/ to the current day. (That doesn’t include pages at http://www.valiant.org/ or http://www.ptcruizer.com/ ). There are an amazing 2,991 vehicles in the 200,000 Mile Club.
The to-do list currently stands at:
* 400 photos to add (roughly)
* 207 items in the “add this week” pile
* 59 additions, suggestions, and changes filed via web-form
* 362 items in the “add at some point” pile
That’s not even including such long-term projects as building year by year histories, adding histories for each vehicle where they do not yet exist, building up the non-car portion of Chrysler history (military projects, AirTemp, etc), interviews with Chrysler engineers and other employees, setting up the subject-matter expert system, etc., etc.
We’re busy people over here.
Hmmm. So who cleans up around there?? And in the “we” part, just how many is that??? ;>)
Thanks for the WW11 information. I am a WW11 buff and a dyed in the Chrysler fan. I’m sure you’re aware that Henry Ford was an admirer of Hitler and a anti-Semite. I’m lookind forward to future articles as well as updates of what is coming down the pipeline.
Someone wrote a great article on Henry Ford a while back - you can find it in the editorials section - http://www.allpar.com/ed/
Um, Curtis, that’s one person, but I’ve been semi-actively looking for a helper. I tried to bring in my old editor from my trade-magazine days but he sorta dropped out without trace. I haven’t been able to get a good system for revision tracking and such set up - don’t have the time or skill to do that, though I did put three days into the search and tried CVS and stuff like that. One solution has been to work more closely with someone else in my “real” work so I have to put in less time there!
“Allpar currently has a number of services including the registry (about 650 vehicles but we really needed to triple that number, at least)”
So exactly what is the registry - what is it’s purpose? I regularily review Allpar - get technical help - add my blurbs - keep up on all things Mopar - recommend Allpar to all. But currently I drive an off the shelf Caravan. I’m waiting to see if the new Challenger will be built & if it will be affordable, in the meantime I’m looking for a new project car/truck.
The registry is there mainly in case we need to locate people with particular cars. Sometimes journalists call with requests, for example. Sometimes Chrysler’s magazines actually call us - look for an article in Forward on high-mileage Chrylsers and Jeeps culled from Allpar’s database! (In these cases we contact owners and ask them to call the journalists/PR people rather than vice versa). If we get critical mass there’s also the possibility of geographical analysis and seeing if we can get people together in one location for meets.