RA - A Year In Review

When Reef Addicts rolled out Jan 1, 2010 a lot of people were excited to see what it was all about. Including me! I had a dream and the support of Jessy and Ed to help make it a reality. We worked long hours and it definitely paid off. The site was different from what people were used to, which was intentional. We wanted something new, something different - once they learned how it worked, they embraced it as you'll see below.

During the past 12 months:

• 143000 people visited the site
• 44,197 absolute unique visitors
• 1962 people joined and participated in some way. Who will be our 2000th registrant?
• 614,000 pages were viewed
• 167 combined articles were posted in the various categories
• 1082 blog entries were posted, receiving 6750 comments.
• 9 podcasts were released
• 44 videos were added to our YouTube channel
• We tweeted on Twitter 267 times to a loyal group of followers.
• 1025 fans "liked" our page updates on Facebook.

The most popular articles:

1. The breakdown of my 280-gallon reef tank - http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...llon-reef-tank
2. LED pendant build - http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...-pendent-build
3. The April Fools prank - http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...o-the-new-site

Some of my favorite articles:

• A generator isn't just an option - it's a must to protect your reef - http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...tect-your-reef
• Staggered Lighting - why? - http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...d-Lighting-why
• The Art of Photo Bombing at MACNA 2010 with John Ciotti - http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...th-John-Ciotti

We had a booth at three major events last year: Marine Aquarium Expo, Mountain West Reef Fest, and Reefapalooza. That allowed us to meet many of you addicts in person, and while we were there we filmed many of the interviews you've seen with a number of vendors. Brand new items coming to market were revealed during some of those sessions. We also recorded a number of clips at MACNA in Orlando.

The site was moved to a new server out of necessity, so for a week R.A. was in limbo. We hope that won't happen again because we don't want to miss contact with you even momentarily.

As each of the holidays rolled around, Jessy created the visuals for the top of the site to keep things fun and topical.
We want to thank all our sponsors that supported Reef Addicts: Ecotech Marine, Reefkoi, Marineland, Instant Ocean, Reefapalooza, Creative Soup, Reef2Reef, Marine Aquarium Expo and by default Melev's Reef.

What does 2011 hold? More articles, more podcasts, more features, more contests, and more fun!