2023 omg.lol Recap
Hello omglolers!
I suppose it’s time for our own little recap/rewind/wrapped kinda thing — a look back at the year that’s ending (in just a few hours, where I am) before we’re all whisked off into the next year ahead (swiftly and involuntarily as ever).
weblog.lol
Weblog.lol launched at the tail end of last year, in beta, and it remains in beta today (go ahead and make your commitment issues jokes here; I deserve them!). But quite a bit has been done with it along the way, and while it’s still far from the robust and mature platform that I can clearly envision in its future, I think it’s a solid and delightful way to write and publish on the web. I’m using it right now, and I’m also about to (finally) roll out a personal blog, as well, so I’ll be using a whole lot more of it over the months to come. Which should hopefully lead to it becoming even more awesome!
Random stats:
- We’re hosting 2,333 weblogs...
- ...consisting of 6,753 entries!
Infrastructure upgrades
In February, following an influx of new signups from a semi-viral Hacker News post, I dove into some much-needed infrastructure work for omg.lol. We moved from a lone, struggling server to a load-balanced cloud of multiple edge nodes supported by a dedicated API server. I also learned a ton about Caddy, with much help (and patience) from my friend Jack. I was an Apache kinda guy for decades before this year, and never envisioned myself using any of the fancy newfangled stuff that’s out there... until I finally did, and realized just how much nicer things could be.
Random stats:
- I don’t have any analytics set up for web traffic, but I just did a quick count of lines in the load balancer log file and can report that we see an average of 4 requests per second, which I think is pretty neat!
Photo sharing
In March, I launched some.pics, a barebones photo sharing service. It’s still very much barebones today, but it’ll be getting the love it needs before long (it really needs some pagination... badly!). I have a ton of plans for it, and I’m really excited about working on it more in the coming months!
Random stats:
- 2,514 pics have been shared...
- ...totalling 3.68 GB!
Proofs
April saw the launch of proven.lol, another fledgeling service with boundless potential. I have a ton of work to do around improving the service (and clarifying its value), but like weblog.lol and some.pics, it’s out there with a solid start and people are playing with it!
Random stats:
- 1,404 proofs have been submitted...
- ...with 1,066 of those proven!
Supporting good causes
This year, we supported two organizations with charitable donations: The Trevor Project, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In September, I partnered with my friend Robb to support Relay FM’s annual St. Jude fundraiser, and it was an incredible success. I can’t wait to do it again next year!
Random stats:
- $1,139.28 raised for The Trevor Project, through my own donations and donations from omg.lol members who chipped in to support during our March campaign
- $3,309.88 raised for St. Jude through the Robb × omg.lol Relay FM campaign
Growth
In 2023, omg.lol gained more than 2,200 new members! This is obviously incredible, and while growth comes with its fair share of challenges (ask me what my inbox looks like), I am beyond humbled and thrilled to see this many people being interested in our weird little corner of the web. I’m also super thankful that we didn’t grow by some scary massive number. Hooray for more slowly-paced, sustainable growth!
2024
So, what’s ahead for omg.lol in 2024? A whole bunch of stuff. In January, I’ll have more specific details to share. It’s going to be a great year, and we’re going to have a lot of fun together! 😄
I hope you all have a wonderful new year with friends and family, online and offline alike. ❤️
— Adam