Gwulo in 2022

It's time for the annual look at plans for the year ahead, and to see how we did in the year just gone.

 

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Plans for 2022

1. My plans

1.1 Gwulo.com - upgrade

I've been working on this for several months now, so it's no surprise that my top priority in 2022 is to see it finished. 

I've completed a test migration from the current website software to the new version of the website's software, and found ways to keep all the main functionality from the current site. Currently I'm working on adding some new features, and expect to have that finished in the next couple of weeks. Then I'll turn to the appearance of the new website, which needs a lot of tidying up.

I expect to have a live copy of the new website online by Easter, then I'll ask for your help finding bugs and suggesting improvements. That'll be a few more months work, which will hopefully be all done by the summer.

I'm looking forward to being able to write about old photos again, instead of writing computer code!

 

1.2 Gwulo's books

Once the upgrade is out of the way I'll get to work on publishing the next book, Volume 5. It'll be great if it is ready by the end of the year, but that will depend on when the upgrade work is finished.

Sometime before then I'll also have to reprint Volume 1, as we're down to the last three boxes, or 150 copies. That'll be the third reprint, which together with its initial print run means there will be 4,000 copies of Volume 1 in print!

 

​2. Your plans

2.1 Newsletter subscribers

If you're enjoying the newsletters, and can think of any Hong Kong friends who might enjoy them, please can you forward them a copy (probably not this one!), along with the link they can use to subscribe: https://gwulo.com/subscribe

 

2.2 Contributors

If you started contributing content to Gwulo in 2021, welcome to the site! To get the most from Gwulo, please take a moment to read through the FAQs. They'll help make sure your photos and content reach the right audience, and don't get lost among Gwulo's 40,000+ pages.

 

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2021 Review

1. Readers, contributors, and patrons

I'll put all the detailed figures at the bottom of the page, but here are some of the key points.

 

1.1 Newsletter subscribers, and other readers

We ended the year with almost 4,700 subscribers to the weekly newsletter, or over 700 more than in 2020. The number of subscribers isn't a completely reliable measure, as it includes people who receive the email but never open it. Still, if I look at the "Total opens" figure, I see that the last newsletter of 2021 has been opened 5,500 times, which is 500 times more than for 2021's first newsletter. So even if the numbers aren't exact, they are growing.

The Wartime Diaries also continue to reach new readers each year, with the latest "80 years ago" daily email delivered to over 130 inboxes each morning.

As well as the email subscribers, we also get a lot of visitors to the website via Google and other referrals. In total, Gwulo's pages were viewed 2.5 million times in 2021. That's around 4% less than 2020, so it'll be interesting to look at this again in 12 months time, and see if it grows again, or if 2020 was the peak for pageviews.

 

1.2 Contributors

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the website during the year.

I've not been posting as much to the website as usual, while I'm focused on the upgrade. A few years ago, that would have caused activity on the website to dry up to almost nothing - it used to happen every summer when I went on vacation with the family. The fact it hasn't happened this year is due to all the contributors' good work, adding a steady flow of interesting new photos and stories:

#	Username	Joined in	Pages created in 2021
1	Klaus	2015	455
2	moddsey	2009	315
3	Admin		285
4	David	2003	228
5	Gerry Hibbert	2011	168
6	jamesho	2021	161
7	HK Bill	2011	159
8	simtang	2021	119
9	MikeB	2018	112
10	ChenQiao	2021	94
... see more

 

And keeping the Q&A going in the website's comments: 

#	Username	Year joined	Comments in 2021
1	moddsey	2009	372
2	annpake	2018	371
3	David	2003	366
4	Klaus	2015	318
5	eurasian_david	2017	222
6	philk	2008	216
7	H Lo	2017	190
8	tngan	2008	165
9	jill	2011	148
10	simtang	2021	125
... see more

 

The third area where you've been busy is the Jurors Lists project. In 2021 the Jurors Lists for 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1940 were typed up and made publicly available on Gwulo for researchers to use. Thank you to Albatross325, Allison, da70, davidlui, Dede, Grace, joreed, leemym, LizB, SandyHamilton, strickja, and wingcli2015 for all your hard work.

The end of the Jurors List project is in sight, as we're almost half way through the 1938 list already, then the last long list is 1939. After that we'll start working backwards from 1893, but those will be much faster to finish: where the 1938 list has 68 pages to type, the 1893 list is just 12 pages long, and the earlier lists get steadily shorter. If you can spare half an hour, please help us and type up a page.

 

1.3 Patrons

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

	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016
Number of patrons	59	61	51	53	55	54
Total HK$ monthly contribution	3,169	3,557	3,047	2,545	2,425	2,440

 

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

1.1 Gwulo.com - upgrade
1.2 Gwulo.com - new features

We've covered these already: so far, so good!

 

1.3 No talks, book, etc.

As expected, I didn't make any progress with a new book. I did end up giving a couple of talks though.

I started the year with a talk to the RAS, showing photos and telling stories from my fourth book. Public gatherings were banned at the time, so that was given via Zoom.

In the autumn I was a speaker at the RGS Gala Dinner. It was a pleasure to present in person again, as I enjoy it a lot more than talking to the void via Zoom!

Then when the cool autumn weather finally arrived, I took RAS members on a guided walk around San Po Kong, introducing its history and showing them some of the area's surprises. It's not a place many people visit, so I enjoyed the chance to show the group something new.

 

1.4 Free books for teachers

This was the idea of giving copies of my books with slight blemishes to schools at no charge. When I introduced it last year, I finished: "I'm not sure if it will gather any interest, or be a complete flop, but I'd like to give it a try."

There were just five responses, so it was an "incomplete flop"! I'll try again when Volume 5 is out.

 

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2021 in numbers

Visitors to the website:

Website traffic (thousands)	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Visitors	1,602	890	420	400	317	253	230	226	263	250	200	157
Unique visitors	1,516	732	267	245	191	148	138	131	155	150	113	88
Pageviews	2,552	2,640	2,077	1,996	1,647	1,292	1,184	1,186	1,351	1,149	919	872

(I think Google changed their way of recording the number of visitors in 2020, explaining the dramatic jump in the number of visitors from 2019 on.)

 

Subscribers:

Newsletter Subscribers	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Email subscriptions	4,695	3,939	3,240	2,737	2,067	1,466	1,211	1,030	833	603	353	180
Facebook 'like / follow'	6,100	5,043	3,487	3,060	2,344	1,849	1,629	965	705	463	273
Twitter followers	700	606	282	229	153	114	100	82	58	43	33
RSS subscriptions [1]							48	81	31	82	53
Total	11,495	9,588	7,009	6,026	4,564	3,420	2,988	2,158	1,627	1,191	712	180
Wartime Diaries subscribers
80 years ago	133
79 years ago	160	110
78 years ago	156	117	74
77 years ago	156	125	112	56
76 years ago	228	219	165	167	108
75 years ago [2]		209	183	148	141	86
74 years ago [2]			199	156	144	109	79
73 years ago [2]				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]	833	780	733	665	667	557	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].Some people subscribe to more than one year's Wartime Diaries, so the total number of individuals subscribing wll be lower..

 

Website content:

	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Photos	29,803	27,477	23,305	19,870	17,740	15,508	11,670	9,401	7,817	6,359	5,725	4,330
Places	5,901	5,628	5,029	4,570	4,290	3,770	3,140	2,867	2,440	2,035	1,623	1,310
Diary pages	5,258	5,051	4,973	4,690	4,630	4,373	3,836	3,243	2,326	1,589
People	3,661	3,458	3,281	3,120	2,900	2,696	2,425	1,907	1,522	1,000	28
Forum topics	2,014	1,853	1,621	1,460	1,310	1,159	1,019	923	761	639	525	350
Stories	564	548	505	480	430	405	341	312	265	243	213	170
Streets	44	37	20
Total pages	47,245	44,052	38,734	34,190	31,300	27,911	22,431	18,653	15,131	11,865	8,114	6,160
Total comments	53,689	49,580	43,690	38,840	35,320	31,861	27,620	24,097	20,883	17,477	14,910	11,370
Jurors Lists (years)	58	55	48	43	38	35	33	31	29	27	19	11

 

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

	2021	2020	2019
People adding pages	287	272	215
People adding comments	582	549	413