by Mike Carey, January 01, 2008

Welcome to my annual ritual, the year in review. A time when I reflect on where we’ve been and what looms on the horizon. As with each year, we have lots of “new things” going on and a continuation of the old.

Without a doubt this year’s BIG “new” thing was a Forum We Could Call Our Own. WL.com for the past several years had been sharing a forum on another website, but no more. This year with our latest upgrade (another “new” item) we developed our own forum. And what a forum! The last missing piece of the puzzle fell into place for WL.com. Our forum has cemented the WL.com community and given it a home. Aaron had told me that we needed our own forum and I have to confess I was a little nervous about the switch. After all, we were associated with a major fishing web site that drew 170,000 visits a month. Why would we want to move from that? It was obvious – as within a few weeks of the forum going live our membership was growing and the request for sub-forums were coming in daily. Seven months later we have twenty-two sub forums catering to the needs of our members. It’s a thriving community and anglers are making new friends, getting questions answered, and having spirited (and civil) debates. Thanks to everyone for making this a success!

A subset of the community concept is the ability to post comments to fishing reports. I have to admit, I was really nervous about this one, but by and large it’s worked out great. It’s another wonderful way to interact on WL.com.

Our second “Big Thing” is of course the new site. Aaron again came forth and created his best version yet. The new site has further pushed the envelope for functionality and coolness factor. And yet even as I write this he is busy at work with our NEW VERSION which we hope to launch by Opening Day. And so it’s hard for me to write about the current site knowing what is coming will blow the readers away YET AGAIN. All I can say is Aaron has a knack for making web sites that rock.

I will mention one new feature which I love – the Video Section. You have to be a member to access the videos (as if there aren’t enough other things to want to become a member). The video list has already grown to forty-one videos featuring great places to fish. I look forward to this area’s continued growth and the day when we hit one hundred videos in the data base. Way cool!

Every year it gets harder to keep track of everyone I should thank. Thanks to Aaron, of course, for his hours of hard work coding and running the site “behind the curtain”. He truly is the Wizard.

Featured Writers – Bruce Middleton, John Kruse, Uncle Wes, and I should just add Bob Johansen in here since he contributes as much or more as anyone. Thanks also to our Moderators – ipodrodder, Marc Martyn, Easy Limits, and (former mod) Bassackwards. They keep an eye out for me when I can’t be there. Special thanks also to Marc for his great videos. Without Marc the east side of this state would be very sparsely videoed indeed.

Finally, thanks to all the readers that contribute their reports, forum posts, and comments. You guys and gals fill in the spaces that would otherwise be blank. Thanks to the members and non-members that just log on and read. You help generate the numbers that allow us to find advertisers to keep us publishing. And thanks to the various members that stepped up last year when we were financially tight and needed help. You got us through a difficult time.

I’m looking forward to another exciting year of growth and community and hope you are as well. Welcome to 2008!