by Mike Carey, September 26, 2005
Welcome to Web Talk. A little late in coming since our site was overhauled last spring, but here it is. I’ll be using this podium to keep you up to date on what’s new on the site and what’s on the horizon. (and try to entertain you with some good fishing stories from time to time.)
It’s been a pretty amazing spring/summer for me. Since Aaron and I upgraded the site last April reader interest has sky-rocketed. Reports submitted to the site are up about 40%. That compares to 3-4 years of stable, but non-growing years. The readership was growing but the reports weren’t. It was a puzzle for me to watch year after year. I can only attribute this year’s tremendous growth to the new site look and features. The ability to be able to search for previous reports has finally made the site what I envisioned it to be - an online fishing diary that you can use to review previous fishing trips, both successful and not. I don’t know about you, but I have already used the search function several times this year. Did I ever fish that lake? Hmm, let me do a search. Sure enough, I fished it in 1999. Did OK, nothing to write home about… How about salmon runs? Let’s see, what was the most successful pink salmon method I’ve used in the past? Quick search, review previous fishing trips - Bingo! Now I can really see the real benefit of submitting fishing reports. I hope you can, too.
Another aspect of the updated site I am really enjoying is the submit picture function on the fishing reports form. It’s great to see all your pictures being submitted with the reports. And those extra special pictures rotating on the front page is pretty neat, too. I hope you’re enjoying the pictures as well.
I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. I can’t thank Aaron Borg enough for his efforts in our redesign. He went way beyond the call of duty to help with the long overdue upgrade, bringing the site into the database age. Thank you Aaron!
And now for something completely different (or not). The one aspect of WL.com that has always mystified me is why we don’t have more readers using the Forum. I know we have strong readership numbers, numbers strong enough to support more activity on the Forum. I’ve talked with Aaron and we think it may be due to the fact that logging on the Forum takes you off of WL.com and on to a different web site. We’re looking at perhaps having our own Forum. It’s something that may come this winter as we have time for site upgrades. Stay tuned.
Aaron and I have been talking about another upgrade that we have been envisioning to grow our online community - member pages. This is something we are very excited about. A Member Page would be a web site on the web site. It would be your own piece of WL.com that each reader could customize to their own heart’s content. It would be an independent page on WL.com that each member could add content, pictures, fishing logs - whatever they chose to add. And it would fit seamlessly into the web site, just like pulling up a Featured Lake, or an article to read. Imagine if we had several hundred member pages from around the state sharing their knowledge of lakes in their areas. Now that’s supercharged information! We plan on making these member pages easy to edit. You would log on to your page, change pictures, text, reports, etc and then click "save". You could use your member page however you see fit. I think you can begin to see the possibilities.
As you can see we aren’t ready to rest just yet. We’ve got lots of ideas for the site that will keep it a useful and popular place to get your lake and saltwater fishing information. So be sure to log on and check us out. It’s going to be a fun virtual fishing trip! We hope you’ll stick around and continue to support WashingtonLakes.com.
Mike