Simpleprop is 6 … and single

For long-time visitors of the site, you may recall that each December I used to do a \”Happy Birthday Simpleprop.com\” article. Last year was a very busy time of year and I swore that the next year I would get back on that proverbial horse. Well, it didn\’t happen this year either, so a belated Happy 6th Birthday to Simpleprop.com!!!

So what\’s happened in the last couple of years on the site that we should look back and be proud of? Well, a lot actually.

The first major change to highlight is our new fangled format which kicked off on July 1st, 2006. I know some of you preferred our old setup better (wow, some of those pics aren\’t correct, but you get the gist of what it used to look like), but going from a very manual typing-everything-in-html-files-and-ftping-them-up-to-a-server to this fancy-schmancy blog software has been a godsend. So a very belated Thank You to Alex for being out technical behind the scenes guru.

So what is the State of the SP Union? Well, pretty darn good actually. After leveling off across 2004, 2005, and 2006, in 2007 we skyrocketed to 455,000 pages served up.

year:   #reqs:  #pages: 
----:  ------:  ------: 
2001   1335     202  
2002   62359    8406  
2003   321443   50335  
2004   994109   255774  
2005   1011084  246657  
2006   1000354  288225  
2007   1186667  455192  

Pretty impressive for a website run by three yahoos who barely can find time to write once a week. But we didn\’t let these numbers go to our head… ok, well we pondered putting advertising on SP for a day or two until we figured we\’d probably only make about 20 bucks a month. Once we start hitting a million pages a year, then we might revisit that decision.

But enough about facts and figures, let\’s take a trip down memory lane and highlight be best SP articles of the past two years… in the classic Academy Award style!

Best Article From the Pre-New Look: Wade A for Great Gifts
Not surprising late 2006 was dominated by sports related articles, but the non sports articles were the strongest contenders with My Heritage.com and Sid Hartman – Time to put him out to pasture… well I suppose that is somewhat sports related.

Best News Article: wadE for Second Amendment
President Shrub takes the shooting at Virginia Tech as an opportunity to put in a plug for the Second Amendment… Klassy!

Best Skunch Article: Wade A for christmas is coming
There is something for everyone in this article. Whether you\’re into religion (#25), the environment (#23), sex toys (#15), or poop (#11 or #7).

Best Sports Article: wadE for Stick A Second Fork In Them For Next Year
This is the type of article I should be writing on a regular basis. Timely, insightful, and more than 4 sentences. Honorable mention in this category for any article ripping on Shecky Souhan.

Best Politics Article: Alex for Who Wants to be a President?
Not only did it spark a good discussion, it was also the last political article written. Methinks the last 4 months have soured all of us on the presidential race. On an interesting side note, Alex has dominated Politics category on SP since the redesign… somewhat surprising.

Best Site News Article: wadE for Simpleprop is 6 … and single
Not much competition in this category. Although I think this article would qualify as the worst in the category.

Best Baseball Article: Wade A for tried…. can’t….
Wade deftly deconstructs an article by professor, nay, \”doctor\” Todd Boyd written for ESPN\’s Page 2 about Barry Bonds.

Best Internet Article: Wade A & Alex for PCP: Random YouTubery
Whatever happened to Wade and Alex\’s \”Point Counterpoint\” Articles anyway? Alex\’s posting of the Mac Tonight video was enough, but George Costanza hawking McDLTs sealed the deal.

Best Music Article: wadE for Love 105? Hate it!
When local FM radio station Drive 105 became Love 105, well… many people were pissed. This article is still the number four article on google if you look up Love 105, and it brought a lot of traffic to SP. But what made this article the winner was comments like this: your insightful and entertaining comments regarding the gunk that passes for FM programming in this market were absolutely choice. Choice? I didn\’t think anyone had said \”choice\” since 1988.

Best Football Article: Wade A & Alex for Playoff Fever
Ok, so their early round picks have always been terrible, but most years they pick the Super Bowl winner. Including this past year. Gotta give them some credit for that.

Best Religion Article: Herbert W. Chilstrom for Op/Ed Piece in the Strib
Accepting the award on Mr. Chilstrom\’s behalf is Wade A.

Best Daily Gambit Article: Wade A for the continued demisement of the english language: first installment
I can\’t wait for the second installment!

Best Food Article: Wade A & Alex for PCP: Cocktails
I think this just shows that Wade and Alex should write more joint articles.

Best Travel Article: wadE for Live From New York…
Tough competition in this category…(this was the only article… although Wade\’s article on Hartford should be reclassified)

Best Comment: Mom Anderson for Comment on dryer balls
Simply a great comment…kudos!

And last, but certainly not least… the Award for Funniest Article: a tie between wadE, Wade A, and Alex AND wadE, Wade A, and Alex for the 6th Annual Austin Bar Crawl and the 7th Annual Austin Bar Crawl
It is that customary winner each year, and rightfully so. While the actual crawl nearly kills one of us each year (and is probably killing all of us slowly), and some of us have sworn off doing another one (again), the fun of going to Austin as a group is still worth doing once a year. Seven years is about four more than I ever though we\’d do, but I hope we make ten!

Thanks again to all of you who stop by simpleprop.com daily, weekly, monthly, or even if this is your first time. Although our lives keep getting busier and busier (more to come on that soon) we are thrilled that we attract such a large number of people from all over the world to this website (Sweden, Canada, Japan, and Denmark in the last few weeks); each of us promises to continue to give you a fun and thoughtful diversion from checking your fantasy league, the recent tomfoolery of Britney Spears, the fall of the stock market, or actual work. But keep in mind… you get what you pay for!


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3 responses to “Simpleprop is 6 … and single”

  1. Brian Scott Avatar

    It’s been almost 24 hours – where is the outraged Santana article?

  2. wadE Avatar

    I had assumed Wade was going to write it, but I may have to. Although I’m not outraged in the way you may think.

  3. Rich Avatar
    Rich

    Bar crawl 2008 or 09? Its my fave feature!

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