For the Record in Year 2013

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

so, here we are, the last day of year 2013. It’s time to look back a bit and to compare the positives and negatives, that happened this year to FTR. I hope you can indulge me for a while – this post will be a bit longer, because there is a lot on my mind I wanted to say.

Positives

- from somewhat problematic beginnings, For the Record grew to be probably (I will leave “probably” here, since we have no official sources for other blogs’ visits) the most visited non-Russian World of Tanks blog in the world. Even in Russian competition, I think we are doing fairly well. That of course couldn’t have happened without you, dear readers. It’s somewhat hard to actually say the exact number of the visitiors ever since its creation, since there was a hosting switch half-way through, but we are fairly stable reader-wise around 50k readers per day, with upper peaks of 100k (yea, I like to brag with the 100k, because I am really proud of that). While in October and November the numbers grew steadily, December was a bit stagnant. The peaks occur almost everytime on patch days (people waiting for patch info), the lows (of around 35k visits) occur on days when I don’t post anything new (not very often) and usually a few days after the test server info is released. None of this would be possible without your continued favour and support.

- FTR is popular all over the world. Based on data from June to Yesterday, FTR gets the most visits from:

1. United States (14,62 percent)
2. Germany (14,33 percent)
3. Poland (8,68 percent)
4. United Kingdom (5,28 percent)
5. Finland (3,83 percent)
6. Canada (3,69 percent)
7. Czech Republic (3,63 percent)
8. Hungary (3,38 percent)
9. Netherlands (2,92 percent)
10. Romania (2,48 percent)
11. France (2,27 percent)
12. Sweden (2,14 percent)
13. Russia (2 percent)
14. Croatia (1,76 percent)
15. Australia (1,75 percent)

Of the more exotic ones around 1 percent, Taiwan is number 19, Japan is 26, 30 are Philippines, 33 is Vietnam and 34 is mainland China, 38 is Brazil, 42 is Thailand (all of these still have tens of thousands of visits), South Korea is 45, 51 is Israel. Altogether, the readerbase of FTR is very diverse, FTR has been accessed from 189 countries, although I am pretty sure members from some of them accessed it only to sell me cheap viagra or to inform me about Saddam’s gold. Vatican is sadly not amongst them – maybe next year.

Seriously though, there are FTR readers all over the world. This makes me very happy and proud, but it also proves that World of Tanks really is played almost everywhere, an amazing achievement by Wargaming. Some say that World of Tanks is “dying” and whatnot, but I don’t see it dying, I see it growing, despite the incompetence of some of the (especially EU) staff.

- FTR managed to stay afloat even after the loss of income from ads (under circumstances still unclear – I did nothing wrong with ads placement or whatever, what we THINK happened was Edrard (who got banned from Adsense for unrelated reasons) logged on FTR gmail account in order to help me set up the banners and Google decided that FTR is a way for him to bypass the ban and banned us both). Thanks to your amazing support, not only FTR went on, but got rid of the ads in the first place. This is something that will be looked into next month, I think I found a way for the ads not to be intrusive, we’ll see.

- FTR managed to stay afloat despite the fact I wanted to drop it several times. Let’s face it: the amount of time FTR takes to run on this level was only increasing ever since I started with it to the point it now takes practically the entire day of constant vigilance with a few hours of translations (or writing) themselves. That sort of forced me to drop things I wanted to do (other games, movies, learning to play better, maybe clanwars), but that’s okay, I don’t mind, since you readers do support FTR. I value your favor a lot.

- FTR managed to stay afloat despite some technical difficulties. Edrard, the owner of the wot-news server has been amazingly helpful in providing me not only with a place on his server, but also technical support despite the fact he now has a lot happening in his own life. For his assistance I am very, very grateful – I can openly say that without him, FTR wouldn’t be here anymore. But not only that: when Wargaming EU and its French “chief” Quasar came moaning to him about FTR, he stood up for FTR, sending WG EU to hell. This is a favor I am and will keep on trying to return.

- keeping the content the way it was – at one point I thought about limiting the amount of content on FTR in order to focus on other things in my life more, but I do feel bound and in debt to you because of your continued support – there have been and there will be no limitations whatsoever.

- adding Rita’s stream to FTR – she is an amazingly cute, spontaneous and kind streamer, not the “AMAGADCHECKMYBEWBS” type. I think this is EXACTLY what a blog, built around anger, sarcasm and mockery of Wargaming needs to mitigate the sourness. Whenever I feel somehow down by “christ, yet another WG fuckup”, I switch her stream on, kinda lifts my mood every time.

- help from WG RU and WG NA – this is something that keeps somehow suprising some people, but no, I don’t hate Wargaming as such. People from Minsk and from the US server have been very, very helpful and I am glad to have talked to them. I would specifically like to thank The_Chieftain (even though we don’t agree always, I respect your opinion), “the one who doesn’t like to be mentioned”, but who helped a lot (talk to you on Skype, thank you for all your work), Cannoneer for the opportunity to pass the historical research, Storm, SerB, Veider and Zlobny for answering the FTR QA and Overlord (who, despite moving on towards WoT Blitz still keeps in touch with the WoT playerbase and is a great person to talk to). Overall I think WG RU and WG NA both do good jobs and are both every open and honest, something WG EU should take an example from

- finding the WG Livejournal community – Russian livejournal forums are a world within a world, a specific place with its specific subculture. I started reading both the KWG and the World-of-ru groups quite some time ago, but I still don’t understand some of the inside jokes. There have been some rage, but some of the people there are amazingly funny and even though I generally don’t post anything there, I try to read pretty much everything and a lot of good things comes from that very community (for example, the “new method” of evaluating tanks being OP). The only thing that is terrible for me as a foreigner is the slang, that is sometimes almost unreadable, but I guess that is its point after all.

- passing on the historical research – some of you might already know there is a group of EU and US server players, actively working on researching books and other publications (including visiting the archives themselves) in order to find new and interesting stuff for World of Tanks. I won’t add any detaily to that, but it’s working and some really interesting stuff has already been passed along. There are a LOT of materials for Italian, Czechoslovak and British tanks, I hope WG can use some of the stuff to improve the game.

Negatives and Failures

Not all is roses and rainbows however and I have done or experienced things on FTR I consider my personal failures in 2013 too. Amongst those are:

- no new design yet – this one bothers me a lot. Some of you might remember that there was a promise made by me to improve the FTR looks in October or so. In order to do that, I made an agreement with a graphic designer I know in person. He produced two designs and I kinda liked neither. I like simplicity, the designs were VERY flash-heavy and the colour combinations and contours were not to my liking. We had a sort of a falling-out by the end of November and ever since I admit I kinda did drop the issue. I will focus on this in January.

- registered comments – this is something I was not happy to do. Ever since the start until like a month ago, the comments were unregistered,, but the amount of trolls in them continually grew and it did already cross the threshold of my patience. I generally prefer free speech as such, but I do realize free speech on the internet would only create a total cesspool I had no time moderating. Therefore, I switched the comments on for registered users only and banned the worst trolls. I think it helped a lot to improve the quality of the comments, leaving even the criticizing ones, but getting rid of the worst spam, insults and personal attacks. From time to time, we have a troll around (I am looking at you, Shlomo Shekelstein), but they behave and I like to think we have some sort of tacit agreement, they don’t mess around TOO much and I don’t run around deleting half of the comments. This way it works.

- not adding new games to FTR – I am sorry, this is another thing I failed at. At one point, I thought of creating a portal for more games (Wargaming products, maybe even War Thunder) with news much like World of Tanks. But it is impossible, I can’t do it unless FTR (or this portal) becomes my full time job (which obviously it cannot, not without ads and without even more readers – for all the numbers, FTR is still a niche blog (about a single game) and considering how few people play WoWp, I don’t see much room for growth there at this moment). I was considering War Thunder too, but my agreement with Edrard prevents me from posting about it (there is a reason the domain is called wot-news). There is some space there, but again, it’s hard to do on my own.

- relationship with WG EU – there were several points, when I reviewed my relationship towards WG EU, thinking “maybe I got this all wrong, maybe I am the one in fault, maybe they are not that bad” – but no. They are idiots. Practically daily fails in one form or another, nothing works properly, there have to be corrections to almost every event, they steal graphic shit and they even steal stuff from FTR (I will get to that later today I think). Czech community management turned for the worse, with Karlie simply trolling around, Tuccy being god knows where and Dargnon being left alone to take all the crap. Quasar is a little bitch for whining to Edrard about FTR and Ectar is… well, Ectar (that, along with the amount of fails apparently gets people promoted in WG EU).

Funny thing though: I think I understand where some of the “Silentstalker is evil” comes from. Some of you might remember the Czechout affair that started the entire deal. I won’t talk about that anymore, but I can tell you that I published probably like 70 percent of the stuff (I intentionally left out some WG EU people involved). Karlie recently posted that the public “only knows like 20 percent of the truth”, which means someone at WG probably made like 50 percent of the story up. No wonder I am the devil, I wouldn’t be surprised if they spread that I sacrifice children to Satan every day (that’s obviously a complete lie, I do it only on Sundays).

- FTR QA failure – I was actually really sad about that one, because I thought it was really cool, when you asked questions and the developers answered. From what I know (what I pieced together from multiple sources), about a month or two ago, there was a rather big falling-out between WG EU and WG RU. One of its effects was WG EU whining about FTR QA and it got shut down as a result. At that point, WG EU planned to introduce their own version of QA, but apparently that failed too, because the Russian developers stated that they don’t have time for such stuff. Maybe it will still appear in one form or another on WG EU forums, but I somehow doubt it.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to produce any other way, that could be massively used by FTR readers to ask questions. Using a friend on RU forums, we tried to “smuggle” some of your questions into SerB’s thread, but they never got answered (there was no ban either however, the questions simply got ignored), some of the questions I asked Storm on LJ forums met the same fate. This is most likely due to the fact Storm’s posts are “themed” (usually he asks stuff like “what do you think of graphics” or “what do you think of MM”) and offtopic questions get ignored.

So, what now…

Now, FTR will go on as before. The priority is the new graphics. Something simple really, I like simple. I will sit down with Edrard and we’ll think of improving FTR and wot-news more. I have a few ideas, but I have to work within the time constraints. As always, any help from you, dear readers (be it donations, pieces of information or simply few kind words) is greatly appreciated.

I wish you all all the best in the new year, let’s make it a blast together!

Silentstalker

PS: To my eternal shame, I forgot the veteran tanker charity in the list of things I am happy about – but that was not exactly my doing, it was organized Carramba66. I am just glad it worked out fine.

108 thoughts on “For the Record in Year 2013”

    • Poland is 3rd, and still most of them don’t know how to play…? wierd.

      SS: you should link some tutorials more often ;)

      • Poland has a really bad press for a reason. Allmost all of us who are good at playing WoT know English. So we pass unnoticed. And those who don’t speak English are easy to distinguish as they like to speak in Polish which is easy to notice.
        I am quite sure that “PL noob” flame is overexaggerated by some even worse in WoT nation trying to hide their mistakes;)

        • All nations got their fair share of idiots. I will damn all idiots actively working at losing the game equally, no matter where they are from. I do get annoyed by all the siema PL remarks though, it is as if we, people from other countries, do not matter enough to be greeted. Siema all would be so much better! ;-)

      • yeah. i remember there’s a really good newbie tutorial in Overlord’s blog.

        Problem is, it’s so old that digging it up will take 10 Necromancers, 20 idiots, and a lifetime’s supply of Churros & Self-Pity.

        Yeah I gave up looking for it.

    • It’s still only a fraction of the WoT playerbase, even if you don’t count the RU players.

      Which means most players are rolling around in blissful ignorance.

      Which is good.

    • Well I’m surprised Finland is as high as it is, but Finland has always had pretty “tight” communities in gaming and in also forum culture.

  5. Love your blog, keep up the good work!
    Don’t let the failures keep you down, and have a great new year!

  6. Congrats SS! It really is a great blog and I love checking it multiple times a day (from Belgium ;)).

    I indeed also always wonder where you find all the time to do this. Perhaps you can outsource some things to people you trust? (No. Don’t worry. I’m not volunteering … :) )

    Anyway. Keep up the good work and a happy new year!

  9. Fakt perfetkná práca, len to na NAJ do budúcna…
    (rly good work, only the best for the future….)

  10. And what about SS on the tankers charity drive? Participation of FTR on the czech WoT magazine? Hope there are a very few positives, man. Open the eyes ;)
    And – THANKS!

    • Right, I kinda forgot about that (*ashamed*), but that matter with the charity is not yet concluded, there will be a big closing post, we’ll see how it goes

      • Hi Silentstalker,
        great Blog, im always looking forward to reading your next post :)
        I’d really like to donate something, but since im underage I can’t donate via PayPal. Maybe you could also find a second way to donate?

        Keep up the great work :)

      • Yeah! I’ve got minor contribution to that.Told about 40 clanmembers for this blog to check it on a regular basis.
        Doing great SS.Best of luck and Happy Holidays!

  15. Again, what do you need this “new graphics” for? You should expand current layout only, staying true to the theme that is now. What is it that you don’t like about it?
    Look at big companies, they don’t change their logos that often ;) .

  16. @ “Negatives and Failures”

    “- no new design yet” – there is no new design needed :)
    most readers are here to read, not to look at some pretty pictures
    the current design is completly sufficent, so just leave it the way it´s now

    “- registered comments” – what´s wrong with that?
    it takes 30 sec. to register as a new user and you can write anything you want, so whats the point in apologising in that matter?
    if it makes your live easier it´s fine

    “- not adding new games to FTR” – well, that blog was originally about WoT, so just stay with it
    i`m sure, there are enough blogs about WT, WoWp and so on

    “- relationship with WG EU” – well, after seeing all the fails and some “conversation” with EU staff i completly agree with you
    if they are seeing you as some kind of a devil it just means you are doing everything right ;)

    “- FTR QA failure” – you tried, it failed (regardless of the reasons) – but at least you tried
    thank you for it

    “Now, FTR will go on as before” – glad to read it
    thank you for all the interesting stuff you are sharing with us and please go on

    (excuse all the typos and bad grammar, i`m not a native speaker and somehow drunk :) )

    • “- no new design yet” – there is no new design needed :)
      -most readers are here to read, not to look at some pretty pictures
      -the current design is completly sufficent, so just leave it the way it´s now

      Yea, I kinda like the fast, simple non-descript layout. It has a title, header, some buttons and most importantly: the articles!
      I hope a new design will keep this simplicity.

  17. hi SS,

    Greats from belgium (we must be pretty low ranked i gues :S )
    I would like to thank you for all what you did this year. Reading your blog is the last thing i do before i get to sleep and the first thing i do in the morning if i got a little time.
    I look forward towards the next year, i believe ftr will still grow some more. And besides, you can realy be proud on your daily average of 50K readers a day.
    Oh and thx for the registered comments, i stopped reading comments mostly because of the spamm but now i read again as there is oftem some more intersting info in it.

  18. One of the first things I do in the morning is checking the FTR for the new stuff and there is always something good. I can only imagine how time consuming this is… When you once posted that you are thinking about shutting FTR down I was really sad, but I thought that it was the right decision because of the high impact this blog have on your private life. I’m glad you continued, tough. Happy New Year! I wish you all the best (good times on the blog, improving relationship with WG EU and getting a girlfriend) :)

    Cheers from Bosnia and Herzegovina (both of them, haha)!

  19. I like your blog a lot, SS. It is an amazing feat your blog is where all the good info is at, as opposed to the rather shitty WG forums. A happy new year to you!

  20. Greetings from Romaina, SS. And a HUGE THANK YOU for your great job from one of the main contributors to our local WoT related website: worldoftanks.ro. Without your hard work and research we wouldn’t be able to provide such great information and translations for our romanian wot community. Keep up the good work and may the new year bring you lots of accomplishments, much joy, very money and – maybe – a tanks addicted girlfriend! Cheers, mate!

  22. Thx for the work during the year :D
    Greetings form germany !
    Stay as good as you are and a good hunt next year for us all.
    Oh and a HAPPY NEW YEAR :D
    Keep it up bro !

  24. What to say? A big THANK YOU for you job! I see that it takes you some times, so I’m really thankful of you’re job!

    • About change:
      I agree with the new design. If it takes you too much time, don’t bother. But, I know that sometimes you may want to change it.

      “Next games” I thought it was near impossible. It would be nice to have news about WoWp (and World of Warships, but it’s alpha so no much news), but since you don’t have time.

      About Charity: I don’t donate, but I was very happy to see that it worked well! Good job to Carramba66! I hope these veterans will be happy!

      I forget but: happy new year to you, all readers, bots, SerB trolling.

      • True, but if the game has a large following, especially if SS gets involved, then hopefully people will understand the game more so hopefully there will be fewer tomatoes around.

        • True and i’d like that to happen but until the game stays closed it is impossible. I followed NA forum closely for quite a bit of time and that didn’t get me into alpha (got bored of delays and promises), so no love from me, only objective judgments.

          It may be as long as a year until that game reaches open beta stage and is available for everyone, so widespread promotion isn’t (unfortunately) beneficial to anyone.

          NA Q&A is in the right language for FTR readers to understand it anyway, if anyone wants some more detailed info.

  26. It’s always a good read.

    Idiots will be idiots and that will never change.

    Keep up the great work and the best to you in the new year.

  28. Please dont redesign the blog. Redesigns, without fail, turn out for the worse. Its good the way it is. It works. I have no complaints about it (a rare thing in its own right)/

  29. What I would really like, if that falls into the “design” category, is to change the script that is responsible for the overlay image galleries. To be honest, the current one really sucks:

    - it doesn’t scale to fit the window
    - it can’t be closed with the ESC key (so, when an insanely large image is displayed, you have to find the close button which is conviniently hidden in the lower right corner :D)
    - galleries can’t be navigates by cursor keys (left/right)

    But to not just whine I would like to thank you for the excellent work you have done to keep the english speaking (and via translators other) audiences well informed about WoT related stuff and wish you all the best in the upcoming year :)

    Also, I would like to say something about the WG EU staffail (that aren’t much needed because you so kindly do part of their job :))

    I’m fairly sure what is going on there – it’s full of “flexible young people that have the enthusiasm to do stuff” – yeah right, seen this kind of bullshit collective once, almost everybody employed there thinks it’s some kind of “fun game and nice experience with ultra-super-nice people with great relationships”.

    However in reality they are bunch of incompetent numbnuts that are totally unfit for the job and the managers are either stupid as well or too kind hearted/without tough bosses above them to fire those losers without mercy and hire somebody with some experience/skill/competence.

    Uff, had to kick “the dead man laying” at least on the last day of the year :D

  30. -_-7

    @Rita not being the “AMAGAGCHECKMYBEWBS type” – hey I still would love to check her boobs! Thay need some thorough check (to see if they’re real/fake for example)! I can do that for free! For a month, 24/7! :D

    @wg eu
    Tards gonna tard I’m afraid. At least until they piss a certain someone off BAD. And then, they will get HOW TERRIBLE’D into fringes of space… I really hope that’s going to happen in 2014.
    @Karlie
    My basement is waiting for you darling! :]

    So, yeah – I hope that all of you (ftr readers, ftr writers, SS, SerB, Storm and a whole bunch of people I forgot to mention) will have a great 2014 – like a million times better than 2013 was. And guys from Paris office – I hope you’ll like Siberia, I hope you’ll spend a lot of time there… :D

  31. Great work Silentstalker. But do burn out please, take some free time to do something completely different now and then ;) We can live a day or two without a new article. (although I caught myself saying “wtf no new article?” every few hours I look up at the page ._. )

  32. - not adding new games to FTR
    Well it’s not like that ppl who read FTR for WoT news also have time to play every other existing MMO game. And I would call it a suicide, if you wanted to post all about WG products (soon to be 3 PC games, World of tanks, World of shitplanes and that 3rd one…) just by yourself. Get people for that.

    Also, maybe out of the blue but if the funds are still a problem, you could try the solution which works for most of the youtubers, bloggers and crap, they for some reason also sell clothes. Just imagine the “How terrible” t-shirts…

  33. It’s nice to see Croatia up there too, allthough i am under impression that there are a lot of croats (and other ”balkanians” ) playing WoT. Anyway Happy New Year/ Sretna Nova Godina :) .

    • Agreed, I was also surprised (pleasantly) to see Croatia ranked so high :) Best wishes in the New Year from Zagreb! / Sve najbolje u Novoj!

  36. Congratulations! You are doing awesome job!
    Have no lags, always good RNG and… Happy New Year!
    ┌─┐　─┐
    　│▒│ /▒/
    　│▒│/▒/
    　│▒ /▒/─┬─┐
    　│▒│▒|▒│▒│
    ┌┴─┴─┐-┘─┘
    │▒┌──┘▒▒▒│
    └┐▒▒▒▒▒▒┌┘
    　└┐▒▒▒▒┌┘

  37. Greetings and a Happy New Year from Romania, Frank. :)

    About the so called FTR “failures”…I don’t see them as failures.
    The design issue isn’t needed, Your girlfriend’s art does the job well :)
    The registered comments it’s a need, also, it takes less than 1 minute to register…every baboon can do it.
    The WG EU relationship….it’s not your fault, they’re simply gelous because they couldn’t accomplish what you did.
    And the QA…meh, you tried, it didn’t worked cuz’ of indirect issues(WG EU whining, Zlobny etc).

    Whatever, I sincerely got surprised to see that my country sits in the top 10 most visiting countries…didn’t expected that(only ones I knew that were often checking your blog were Treborn’s community, I with few clan mates and other romanian forumites).

    Still, keep up the good work. :)

  40. So about those “failures”
    I personally don’t consider the to be your failures. Some of them failed because someone else, you didn’t have time for some other things… Don’t be so negative. FTR has brought me so many news and clarified much more thing than WG EU (Although there are some guys that are competent there)

    Just take your time, rest a while for these holidays and do whatever you feel it’s needed for the FTR. The new design is not essential but it could be a nice upgrade.
    Anyway, keep up the good work.

    Happy New Year to all of you, and may it be the best one.

  43. SS, been visiting your site for quite some time now. I remember congratulating you when you hit 1m views (I was the first post and then it got deleted later that day!). Hell of a job you’ve done, and I can’t imagine getting my WOT news fix from any other source – thanks for all the hard work. And if you ever feel you’re running low on funds to keep it going, I think your loyal readers would stun you again.

      • Could you possibly make an Excel table or something like that to display the percentage of visitors from all of these countries ? Would make me and probably a large part of the visitors from the unnamed countries happy :3

  47. Current design works just fine, actually I like this sort of amateur-ish vibe FTR has with it.

  48. Been visiting since august of this year that’s when i started to get into World of Tanks its been great all this time and i still pop on the site when am in college if am bored great source of info Many thanks SS

  49. Weird as almost every game I see belgian people talking. Belgium is nowhere to be seen as FTR visitor :( The best country!!!!

  50. I hope next year your relationship with WG improves
    Keep the good work ;), Rita’s stream i have to check that out, Happy New Year from Portugal

  51. Thanks for running this blog SS, i check it most days, it has some neat info and other humours stuff on it. :D
    Happy New Year!

  53. You get 2 country hits from me. I check it out almost every day from work that uses french servers and at home (poland).

    Great work SilentStalker. I apreciate the effort you put into making this.

  54. “No wonder I am the devil, I wouldn’t be surprised if they spread that I sacrifice children to Satan every day (that’s obviously a complete lie, I do it only on Sundays).”
    Hahaha, I love your humor :D
    Happy new year to you SS :)

  55. I have known this blog for 4-3 mounths now?? sort to say
    and i really like the work and effort you are putting on this blog and also i really like the whole convertation that you can start in the comments and just learn from a bit of a message a whole tones of other information and also this helps that after you make the coment section to be registered to write trolls and stupid spammers are very less and you can now have a really good convertation on subjects and learn from them
    Happy new year to you SS and ofc to all readers from around the world
    Greetings from a crazy rager from Greece :)

  56. This is my one and only source of ‘things WoT’. Keep up the work, loving it.

    Happy new year from Norway.

  58. Cheers from the USA
    My thanks to you (Silentstalker) and your associates for all the good work you have done or about to do in the future. You are one of my daily reads for WoT. Keep up the good work and have a Happy New Year.

  61. Happy New Year!! I like how you think about WG EU, then a sudden 180 degree turn and hit them back again.

    Special Mentions to WG EU, the one you looking at comment and SS ♥ Rita

  62. Hey SilentStalker!
    Keep up the good work, FTR is still THE BEST place to read about WoT (I even stopped following worldoftanks.eu ).

    Glad to hear you will keep doing FTR, and that it gives xou back some positive feelings.

    Happy 2014 for everyone!

  68. Thanks for all of your hard work SilentStalker. The English speaking WoT community would be lost without you.

  69. Happy New Year from NZ

    Have enjoyed reading the interesting material on FTR and look forward to much more

  70. SS – I got sucked here from the WoT NA Forums, and you are now the third permanent browser window open when I work at my home office.

    Thank you for your work, please keep it up! You sacrifice much more for us than the other way around. Time is the one thing that, when you spend it, you can never get it back.

    On the graphics/look & feel of FTR: Content is king, brother. Sure, a nice clean layout helps, but it is *what* you post that brings me here and keeps me coming back. So don’t beat yourself up to much over not having gotten around to a graphic redesign yet. Better to make it a low priority, but take the time to get it right, I think.

    A nice-looking piece of shit is still a piece of shit.

    Happy New Year!