Today marks the fifth year of operation for SDCFans.com. I started this site back in 2007 partly to assuage my enthusiasm for the park and the amusement industry in general, and partly to hone my programming skills by using the site as a sandbox of sorts for various programming techniques. We're now on the 11th revision of the site, with most of those revisions having occurred during the first couple years due to the fact that I was constantly re-writing the site's code. I've certainly tried a lot of things with the site over the years, but these days I'm taking a smarter approach and am focusing on what really matters for the site: the community.
Over the last five years the site's look and features have changed over and over again, but the community that has risen up around it on these forums has remained a consistently friendly and thriving place that is both full of information about the park and enjoyable discussion. Getting to be a part of this community has definitely made all the work worthwhile.
As you may have noticed recently, I'm taking a different approach to the site and have stopped attempting to code my own features or manage a lot of random little updates. My basic plan for now is to focus on the forums and add third-party features that support and expand them. I've reserved our domain name for another couple of years and hosting for another year (after which I'll probably move to another host), so we're set to keep moving forward for at least awhile longer.
Thanks to everybody that's been a part of this site over the last five years. I hope you guys have enjoyed it as much as I have.