On Turning Five

    • 1083 posts
    September 7, 2006 6:37 PM BST
    Hi, luvs--

    I try hard not to plug my personal website here. I usually think it's tacky. And if Katie wants to pull this thread, I wouldn't blame her a bit.

    But this is special.

    Sakuramina.com turned five back in August. Here's the article, and I'd appreciate any feedback (good or bad) sent to to my personal e-mail, at the bottom of the page.

    Many thanks, dear sisters, for all your love and support these last five years!

    Mina
    --------
    On Turning Five

    Not me, silly. I'm a little past that. Hell, I'm past 30.

    Nope, Sakuramina.com--formerly Lady Jayne's Homepage--recently celebrated its fifth continuous year of operation. It doesn't seem possible, but it is.

    August 2001 was a busy time in my life. (We won't go into September; that's a period of time I don't think any of us living will ever forget.) It was during this time I got frustrated with Gay.com, and moved my site to Tripod. It's been there ever since. I don't have an exact day, but have narrowed it down to Monday, the 20th of August, 2001. My first response was dated the 22nd of August, 2001. I haven't looked back since!

    Oh, we've had a name change, and I bought (and pay for) the www address and to keep ads off the site, but it's been worth it, knowing that people are out there, reading my stuff and hopefully finding some answers to their TG/TS/CD questions.

    I've grown over the last five years, and so has this website. Some days, I marvel at it. (Truthfully, there are some days I want to yank the plug on it.) I've been well received; I've also been hacked a number of times. (This is actually a little silly when you think about it, as I don't host any part of the website myself.) I've done a massive re-launch, and I have also corrected many little mistakes. I'm still finding those. Shows I'm only human, I guess.

    When I started, very few people dropped in. Last time I did the math, I'm getting something like 6,000+ hits a month. That's just over 72,000 hits a year. That may not seem like much compared to some other sites, but it's huge for a personal site that offers what it does. Thank you, everyone!

    The question still comes up, “why?” Really, it's because I see this website as a good thing. If I can help one person, even just one, make a good choice for them about CD/TG/TS things, and what those really mean, it's all worth my while. (And yes, that means fixing the hacks on my guestbook.) When sakuramina.com gets to be too much work, I'll yank it. That's been the premise, sort of, since day one.

    So, have a piece of cake, and help me celebrate a milestone of sorts. Actually, I'm serious here--if you've read anything on my site (or in my books) that has been helpful, let me know. I'd like to put notes, anecdotes, etc. up in (the section of website). Drop me a line at [email protected].