Gwulo in 2019

Time for a look back at Gwulo's 2018, and ahead to the plans for 2019.

There weren't any major dramas in 2018, instead it was a year of steady growth. I've put the detailed figures at the bottom of the page for anyone who is interested, but here are a few highlights:

• 245,000 unique visitors to the website in 2018
• 2,737 subscribers to the weekly newsletter, up 32% from 2017
• Over 2,800 new photos, places, people, etc. added, so the site now has over 34,000 pages in total

There is more than enough drama happening elsewhere in the world at the moment, so I'm happy that our little corner of the internet continues to thrive, remains free of spam and any worries of fake news, and has comments that are a pleasure to read.

To all of Gwulo's contributors, please give yourself a pat on the back. I look forward to reading what we all discover in 2019.

Best regards,

David

 

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2018 Review of progress against plans

Last year's plans were split into four groups:

1. Ask for help with running costs

During 2018, a few patrons left, and a few new patrons signed up, so overall we ended up about where we started. 

	2018	2017	2016
Number of patrons	53	55	54
Total HK$ monthly contribution	2,545	2,425	2,440

Thank you to all Gwulo's patrons for your generous support.

 

2. Talks and a book

It was a quiet year for giving talks, but the book project continued well. The second volume was published last month, and I'm pleased with how it looks, and the feedback from readers.

Initial orders of the new Volume 2 via the Gwulo website are much less then for Volume 1 over the same period (appx. 350 vs. 600). But this year the new Volume was available in book stores straight away, so I'm hoping some of the sales have happened there instead. I'll find out when the bookstores send in their sales reports, and will have a better comparison around April.

 

3. Keep the site running smoothly

I'm happy with the performance and reliability of the website over the last year.

 

4. Add new features

There weren't many changes to the site, just a tidy-up of the tags, and a couple of new features for contributors:

• Each contributor's page now shows a list of all the pages they have written and / or commented on, eg: here are moddsey's recent additions to the site.
• I also added a profile section, where contributors can tell us a bit about themselves and their interests. The profiles that have been added so far make interesting reading.

 

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Plans for 2019

1. Ask for help with running costs

If you'd like to become a patron and support Gwulo, please visit Gwulo's Patreon page for more information and to sign up.

 

2. Talks and a book

Though sales of Volume 2 are slower, they're still easily enough to make it worth publishing, so I plan to publish the next volume, number 3, at the end of this year. A couple of people have suggested that Gwulo's books make a good gift for business visitors, and I've also had an order from a local boutique hotel, who've put a copy in each guest's room. If you have friends at any similar businesses that could benefit from Gwulo's books, I'll be grateful if you could let them know. 

A couple of speaking events are confirmed for Q1, and I hope more organisations will get in touch through the year. I've offered to prepare and give a new talk (number 5) in Q2, so I'll let you know if that goes ahead.

I've also been approached about presenting the material in a couple of interesting new ways. It's early days yet, but if they go ahead you'll be sure to hear about them here. 

 

3. Keep the site running smoothly

There aren't any major upgrades planned, but no doubt something will turn up during the year that needs fixing.

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4. Add new features

I've got four ideas for this year.

4.1 Add a new "Street" page type. Despite being on the last two years to-do lists and not getting done, this still seems a good idea. So I've started work on it, and so far there are a couple of test Street pages to see. There are still more features to add, but expect to see more about how to use the Street pages over the next few weeks.

4.2 Prepare Gwulo for the long term. As the introduction mentioned, the Gwulo website has grown to over 34,000 pages. It is an important resource for information about Hong Kong's history, but a website is a fragile thing: stop paying the website hosting company and all that information would vanish overnight.

So work is underway to maintain a separate copy of the site that will be archived for the long term. I'm waiting to hear that the work is complete then I'll explain it in more detail.

4.3 Relatives, including siblings. The number of People pages grows steadily, and many of them linked together by their parent / child relationships. I'd like to make the relationships easier to view - the current display isn't very clear. And since we know that if two people share the same parents they must be brother or sister, I'd also like to display a person's siblings in their list of relatives.

4.4 Integrate GPS with the maps. Since moving to Kowloon, I'm often walking in the ridge of hills between Fei Ngo Shan and Beacon Hill. I often wonder if there are any of Rob's military sites nearby that I should look at, so what I'd really like is to open Gwulo's map on my smartphone, and use GPS to centre it on my current location. That would let me quickly see what's nearby.

 

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2018 in numbers

Visitors to the website:

	Website traffic (thousands)	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
	Visitors	400	317	253	230	226	263	250	200	157
	Unique visitors	245	191	148	138	131	155	150	113	88
	Pageviews	1,996	1,647	1,292	1,184	1,186	1,351	1,149	919	872

 

Subscribers:

	Newsletter Subscribers	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
	Email subscriptions	2,737	2,067	1,466	1,211	1,030	833	603	353	180
	Facebook 'like / follow'	3,060	2,344	1,849	1,629	965	705	463	273
	Twitter followers	229	153	114	100	82	58	43	33
	RSS subscriptions [1]				48	81	31	82	53
	Total	6,026	4,564	3,420	2,988	2,158	1,627	1,191	712	180
	Wartime Diaries subscribers
	77 years ago	56
	76 years ago	167	108
	75 years ago	148	141	86
	74 years ago	156	144	109	79
	73 years ago	138	131	108	91	100
	72 years ago [2]		143	115	89	97	109
	71 years ago [2]			139	85	88	88	81
	70 years ago [2]				94	42	44	37
	Total [3]	620	412	380	438	327	241	118

Notes:
[1]. Since switching from Feedburner to MailChimp, we have no way to monitor the number of RSS subscriptions.
[2]. These diary cycles had already finished, so I don't count their subscribers this year.
[3]. The Total is less than the sum of the rows because many subscribers are subscribed to more than one year's Wartime Diaries, but I only count them once in the Total.

 

Content:

	Pages on website	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
	Photos	19,870	17,740	15,508	11,670	9,401	7,817	6,359	5,725	4,330
	Places	4,570	4,290	3,770	3,140	2,867	2,440	2,035	1,623	1,310
	Diary pages	4,690	4,630	4,373	3,836	3,243	2,326	1,589
	People	3,120	2,900	2,696	2,425	1,907	1,522	1,000	28
	Forum topics	1,460	1,310	1,159	1,019	923	761	639	525	350
	Stories	480	430	405	341	312	265	243	213	170
	Total pages	34,190	31,300	27,911	22,431	18,653	15,131	11,865	8,114	6,160
	Total comments	38,840	35,320	31,861	27,620	24,097	20,883	17,477	14,910	11,370
	Jurors Lists (years)	43	38	35	33	31	29	27	19	11