Gadgetory

this video has been about seven months in the making if you're near the TechnoBuffalo and new to the YouTube channel periodically I'll do the state of the site where I talk about everything we've done right wrong share some milestones to kind of pull back the curtains but you know what it's like we can do this because we are independent we're not owned by anyone so we can sort of share information or not beholden to any sort of company we can share whatever I want to share with you guys what I want to share is everything so let's start with the site the first thing you'll notice if you go to the site today is that it looks completely different and again one of the points of the video is to talk about we did right and wrong and one thing we did wrong was our ads for the past couple years and give you some context we are again independent site we're not owned by CBS a AOL Vox or any other large even publicly traded company so that means all the ads that we run run through an ad network we don't have the resources to go out and do direct sales and in those ad networks sometimes malicious ads will get in you may have seen some of those weird takeover ads that happen on mobile horrible things that we never signed off on or wanted but our hands are sort of tied behind her back because that's the only way that revenue comes into the site is through those ad networks we didn't have the ability to sort of turn off certain networks we had to sort of just go through one by one by one and see the problem stopped and we thought we'd isolate it and then it would come back again and we heard the complaints and we know it was a bad experience I didn't like the ads on my own website it was really hard for us to find a middle ground between having to make revenue but also be gonna provide a really good experience so about seven months ago we started building what you see right now which is TechnoBuffalo 4.0 it's a fourth version the site we started from code zero previously been building on older code he's kind of going as we went along we started from zero and built the site all back up the first thing you'll notice that it is raizy fast way faster than our old site in fact it's almost six times faster than our old site and beyond that the content on the site loads you for the JavaScript for the ads or even go to load so you will see content before any ads ever show up on the site we also now have the ability to pull ads directly out of our stack if there's a malicious ad or something's wrong we can pull that out on our own about having to go to somebody else and way we can move things around the experience isn't good we took control back of the site and my hope is that we found a really good middle ground between having to have ads but also providing you a really good experience or maybe you don't even notice that they are there but something that was really important to me to Shaun Ani who sort of oversaw the revision to the site and oversee development we want a good experience we know that no site with ads is ever going to be perfect but I hope that what you see now is better than what we had and we're going to keep improving we're gonna keep getting better you have the ability to add new things we can move ads around again we can take things out as we need so check out the new website you'll notice new logo new branding everything about the site is brand new I want the site to reflect the way I view the company as professional and as a voice of the consumer and I'm hoping that from here on out we can do that for you so if you haven't gone to site in a while maybe you had a bad experience I welcome you back to try it try it on your phone right on your tablet try it on a desktop we worked really hard to create a good experience and know again that we are independents and you compare us to larger sites in our space we're doing the best that we can with the resources that we have without having a huge ad sales team that goes out and direct sales for us so I really hope that we struck that middle ground chord find a good experience now on the stat side we have to hit a lot of milestones on the website even before we relaunch the new version we finally crossed three million uniques per months over three million people came to the website and we passed a 15 million pageviews threshold for money from milestones that I really wanted to hit for calendar year 2016 as he moving to 2017 my goal is by into the years to get us to four million uniques and 20 million pages a month that sort of we're all considered the year a success for the website I'm going to be branching out into other websites you'll see sort of new things right to pop up next three or four months I'll be our first officially sanctioned TechnoBuffalo satellite site we're really excited about that and hopefully I can share information with you in the next few so again thank you guys for for watching the website on the video side you'll see things have changed the past few weeks we re committing to video to creating a really quality video and product that I am proud to have on the channel every single time about four years we've been putting out for the as per week and that's been a strenuous schedule for us come March you'll see that start to drop down to one to two videos a week to where you can put up videos when we feel they are done we feel they are ready and where the quality and topic is something I am proud of and that we are proud to show you sure saw that new trend start to happen the past few weeks we saw it with the tesla model x one and a half months later and that's the standard that we're planning on setting for video moving forward and if you don't feel you've lived up to that standard let us know if you haven't watched it videos in a while something I said at their website come back watch them we are trying really hard through the voice of the consumer that's something that thing independent gives us use this opportunity to talk about whatever we want that having to worry about sponsors or board of directors it's freedom it's something that I'd love to have so please come back watch the videos give us feedback we're trying to find new ways to engage we brought on Jesse Ortiz I'm putting at sort of leading some these social things for us to see our social channels have gotten way more active interact with us we'd love to talk to you what I try to push what we can do here at TechnoBuffalo I'm hoping you'll see that on the video and the website and if you also you guys want to see or know let us know in the comments down below I want to just to give you guys a real candid view of what's been going on and things you've done right and wrong I think we've done a lot right we've also done a lot wrong and you have to sort of recognize where you drop the ball to move forward and to create a better product that's sort of what I want to do so long winded video notes for the people who are dedicated to the channel and maybe haven't seen us in a while thank you for sticking with us those of you that are new thank you for watching until next date of the site's I'm John Wright