Gwulo in 2020

We'll soon be into March, so before we get any farther into 2020 let's take a quick look back at how Gwulo did in 2019, then ahead to the plans for this year:

2019 Review

1. How did the website grow in 2019?

You can see the full numbers at the bottom of the page, but I'm very pleased to report that we added over 4,800 pages. Gwulo.com ended 2019 with 38,734 pages, including 23,305 photos.

If you look at the Number of pages created in 2019 per user, you'll see that 215 people added pages to the site during the year. I'll ask the top three to stand up and take a bow: Andrew Suddaby, Moddsey, and Klaus. Comments are also valuable additions to the site, so we mustn't forget our commenters either. Two commenters, Grace and wingcli2015, deserve a special mention: they've done the bulk of the work to add type up the five new Jurors Lists added to the site over the year. Thanks to you all for your help to grow Gwulo's record of Hong Kong history.

The audience for all this new information continues to grow as well. In 2019, 3,240 subscribers received the regular Gwulo newsletter, and over 267,000 people visited the website. All those visitors meant the website received over 2 million page views in 2019, the first time we've passed that milestone.

2. How did last year's plans turn out?

2.1 Ask for help with running costs

Gwulo's patrons make a monthly contribution towards the costs of running Gwulo. Thank you all for your generous support.

2.2 Talks and a book

I enjoyed returning to the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) in Hong Kong and to the Friends of the RASHKB in London to present new talks to their members. I was also pleased to present to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) for the first time. That talk had over 140 people attend, which is the largest audience to date for a Gwulo talk.

Last year I noted how the second Gwulo book had sold more slowly than the first, so I was a bit nervous about how Volume 3 would sell. Happily it has sold at about the same rate as Volume 2, so although we've lost the novelty value that boosted sales of Volume 1, sales are good enough to keep on with the project.

One positive change this year is that many people bought the set of 3 Volumes over Christmas - probably as gifts - so the earlier books got a boost in sales. Across all three volumes we've sold a total of 2,800 books to date.

2.3 Keep the site running smoothly

There weren't any major disasters during the year, but as the site grows it tends to slow down. Towards the end of the year I spent some time tuning performance so that pages load faster again.

2.4 Add new features

These new features were added in 2019:

• "People" pages now show the person's siblings.
• The regular archiving of the Gwulo website is now in operation. I'll write more about this in a future newsletter.
• A new "Street" page was added, to record streets and paths around Hong Kong. We've created pages for several of the streets in TST and Wanchai, and will continue to add more over time.

It's also good to see more contributors are using their profiles to tell us about their background and interests. This was a feature added in 2018.

Plans for 2020

1. My plans

1.1 Gwulo.com

This year's task is to investigate how to upgrade the software used to run the Gwulo.com website.

The website runs on Drupal, an open-source Content Management System. The version 7 of Drupal that we currently use will become unsupported in November 2021, so it's time to plan for the upgrade to the next version.

The new version offers improvements in how it handles photos, and how it supports smartphones and tablets. But it won't all be plain sailing as there are some significant changes and not all the features we currently use are available in the new version. Looking back at the last time I upgraded the site, I don't expect this work will be finished in 2020, but it's time to begin.

I expect this will use up all the time I spend with my "website developer" hat on, so I don't plan to add any new features to the site in 2020.

1.2 Talks and a book

I've had to postpone the three talks I was going to give in the first quarter of this year, due to the measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. I'm hoping the talks will be rescheduled once public venues are available again.

Turning to the books, I have an outline ready for Volume 4. I'll work to have that published at the end of the year. (Volume 3 was published too late to be in the shops in time for Christmas, so this year I'll make an earlier start.)

I'll also investigate whether it makes sense to translate Volume 1 into Chinese. Several of Gwulo's readers and contributors have said they believe there is a market for a Chinese-language version of the Gwulo books, so this would be a test of whether local readers would enjoy (and buy!) them. Some of the things I'll need to look into:

• how to get a good translation that gets the facts right while keeping the same tone as the original
• what price the book can sell at and whether it will cover the costs of translation (I've noticed that local-history books in Chinese tend to be priced lower than the current prices of the Gwulo books)
• how to market the book - I usually market through the Gwulo website but less than 20% of visitors to the website read Chinese, so I can't rely on that

​2. Your plans

Can you help Gwulo in 2020? Here are some ideas:

• Tell a friend - is there someone you know who'd enjoy the Gwulo website and newsletter? Please let them know, and include a link for them to subscribe to the newsletter: https://gwulo.com/subscribe
• Help with running costs - if Gwulo is as valuable to you as, say, a magazine subscription, please consider becoming a patron of Gwulo. Visit Gwulo's Patreon page for more information and to sign up.
• Share what you know - if you spot a page where you can add information, please add a comment to it. Or create a page for a Street / Place / Person / Organisation you know about that is part of old Hong Kong. If you've been researching a piece of Hong Kong's history that doesn't fit into any of those categories, go ahead and add a page to the Forum instead.
• Show us your old Hong Kong photos - you can upload a digital copy of the photo to the Gwulo website, or if you'd like to find a good home for the original photos, I'm always happy to receive old photos of Hong Kong.
• Lend us your typing skills - even if you can't think of a page or comment to add, as long as you can type you can help. It'll take about 30 minutes of your time to type up a page of an old Hong Kong Jurors List. It's not glamorous work, but I think of it as someone working on the foundations of a new building - the work may go unseen, but the end results are invaluable. If each newsletter subscriber typed up one page, we'd have all the Jurors Lists online and searchable within a few weeks!

That's the end of the 2019 wrap-up / 2020 plans. Next newsletter we'll get back to Hong Kong's history, and as I've just finished a round of bidding on eBay, I'll have some new photos to share in the coming weeks.

Finally, a goal for 2020 that's much more important than anything to do with a website - let's all stay healthy in the year ahead.

Best regards,

David

2019 in numbers

Visitors to the website:

Subscribers:

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 people are subscribed to more than one year's Wartime Diaries, but I only count them once in the Total.

Website content:

Number of people adding pages to the website during the year: