It seems like a lifetime ago now, but today we celebrate TowersStreet’s first birthday! Twelve months ago we set out to create a brand new website from scratch dedicated to Alton Towers. A website which first and foremost would have a fun and welcoming community, with the interests of members and readers at its heart. We take a look at the past year along with what we’ve got to come.
Setting up shop
As team member Sazzle recalls, this time last year was a rather manic affair:
We unexpectedly found ourselves setting up a temporary home termed Project Aurora, courtesy of Joel. Before we'd even sat down in the new house, the team spent a further four hours working on a new name, and TowersStreet was born. We as a team had no idea how the community would react to what happened, but we were so very overwhelmed with the response - almost 300 people joined within the first 48 hours of us being live! The team had a lot to do after settling on a name; find a logo (thanks Adam!), settle on a colour scheme, build sub forums, oh.. and... build a website!
Our meets
The team, no matter which website they have worked on have always aimed to make meets a prominent feature of the site, and so it was less than a week later when we had our first 'mini-meet' since creating TowersStreet. Sazzle was amongst the attendees:
Things were as normal as they could be. The community had made it through as strong as ever! The forums were buzzing, the atmosphere was fresh, and the happiness was shining through. Our Official Meets are still growing and are testament to the fact we have such welcoming and passionate members. Our Opening Meet of 2013 totalled in excess of 50, and that was without The Smiler being open! My biggest source of pride from being on the TowersStreet team is not from staring at site statistics, it's from standing in the background on meets and smiling to myself at all the laughter and discussion going on around me.
We've come a long way
There's been a huge amount of work put into TowersStreet in just 365 days. From our exclusive The Smiler competition last year, redesigns to our site and extensive news coverage over the past year, we've achieved far more than we ever thought possible:
- Theme Park and Resort sections of the website launched
- Over 1,000 members and over 73,000 posts on our forums
- Over 1,000 followers on Twitter and over 1,600 likes on Facebook
- Over 5 million pageviews on our website!
That doesn't mean to say we're resting on our laurels though, we have a huge amount of content still to produce, and our work in providing the best website we possibly can for our members will never stop.
Birthday celebrations
There's been a lot going on in recent weeks with the opening of The Smiler, and along with the team's other commitments it's meant we're a little behind on planning for our birthday celebrations. We're aiming to have a month of features and surprises throughout July, but in the meantime we thought we'd whet your appetite with a few tidbits:
Talbot Street Tuesday
So it turns out our Birthday is on a Tuesday, and what a coincidence, Talbot Street Tuesdays also fall on a Tuesday. Squiggles loves a good anniversary and so has been busying himself behind the scenes to prepare an update, not quite like any Talbot Street Tuesday before it. Check back later for an historic update befitting of the big day.
Pin badges
Yes, we're glad to confirm that we've not been ignoring your shouts, screams and general rants for pin badges! We're in the process of arranging a design and supplier for a TowersStreet pin badge. Whilst we're unable to confirm specific information at present, we hope to share details on how to get hold of your very own pin badge at some point next month. Stay tuned to our forums, Facebook and Twitter for further information in the coming weeks.
And much more
Birthdays are no fun without surprises, so we have a few more things up our sleeves which we'll be sharing with you during July.
And finally - thank you!
Whether you post in our forums, contribute content, attend our meets, like us on Facebook or even just browse TowersStreet from time; every single one of you have made and will continue to make TowersStreet what it is. Without your support, we wouldn't have had the drive to make TowerStreet what it is today, or develop it even further in future. And for that, from the whole of the TowersStreet Team we'd like to say a huge THANK YOU.
Here's to many more years to come!
Happy birthday ;D
