The mobile site, apparently, looked like a Times Square dumping ground. I apologize about that. Typically, I view the site on a desktop and it’s nowhere near as bad as on mobile. So I’m turning a handful of ads off in an effort to clean it all up. It should appear as such in an hour or so, because it happens on Google’s end.
My apologies for the junk user experience.
About
Thanks! I thought I was on Jalop….. 🙂
Thanks for listening and swiftly fixing things. How is the site doing otherwise, can you say something about that? The time of 100+ comments per post are long gone; has much of the traffic here moved to Facebook and other sites?
Always happy to be transparent about the site.
It’s… alive. But it’s certainly not thriving. Traffic fell of a cliff many years ago, when Google changed something and we never recovered. Now pair that with the incredibly clear decrease in content, and quality of content (not a comment on anyone’s work I just miss some of the older types of posts), and you have were we are today.
The crazy thing is that we have to pay a good amount each month for hosting since the site itself is SO heavy due to years of photos. I still wince when I think about the redesign though, which killed a TON of my favorite old posts. That also hurt our search traffic since those articles and pics went bye-bye, so too did the traffic they brought in.
It’s tough, because I have a full-time day job that demands my attention. But I can’t let the site go, either. It most certainly needs a major infusion of new voices with Hooniverse-appropriate content, but we have no money to provide for that. My goal, to get moving in a good direction though, would be at least 5 posts per day. When you start to think like that, however, you start to force it… and content suffers more.
So we’re just kind of floating in the breeze at the moment. The YouTube channel makes just enough to keep the servers humming.
I see what Torch and David are doing at The Autopian and I’m impressed, as that’s a direction I would’ve love to see Hooniverse grow to… but they can do so because of a generous financial backing. Sadly, that’s what we would need here and I don’t see something like that happening anytime soon.
That’s a tough and honest assessment…I’m really happy you keep the site running and there’s still a lot of quality content here. It’s just quite irregular, that’s definitely a downside. I’ve tried to add The Autopian to my daily routine, but despite seemingly interesting articles, I haven’t been able to get sucked in. Many of the posts are too long-winded for my taste. Who is backing them so generously? Anyway, fingers crossed for a new dawn at the Hooniverse!
They’ve been very upfront about having Optima Batteries as a sponsor, and I believe Beau has a decent stake in it.
Beau is the stake. And he’s a genuine car dude supporting other car dudes to make fun car content.
“…generous financial backing. Sadly, that’s what we would need here…”
I’m doing what I can but honestly there’s a limit to the number of t-shirts I need right now.
lol you do plenty just by clicking and commenting.
Thanks for the info and the thoughtful reply to our kvetching. Safe to say, I wasn’t aware how much of a labor of love the ‘verse is!
Q: Any interest in article submissions from the peanut gallery?
(I’d love to see more of your Volvo, so that’s an eager peanut-yes)
Always – it all helps
Thanks for listening, it was approaching Jalopnik and TTAC levels of ads. ?
Still my favorite car site. I love Autopian, but all the posts are too long. It feels like there’s probably 30-50% fluff in many posts. Curbside Classics is another site I like with a similar problem.
That said, what do I know about writing or running a successful web site. I realize that ads bring in the money (you’re not making it from our comments ?), so I expect they’ll return in some form.
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