Amazingly we’ve been publishing stories dedicated to the Isle of Wight for seven years, as of today (Friday).
Yes, it’s our seventh birthday!
Facebook Happy Birthdays
We had half-forgotten about it, until today when a crazy number of ‘Happy Birthday’ messages started getting posted to our Facebook profile.
Thanks for much for those – there’s so many messages, we can’t count!
That’s not the only celebration today.
70,000 readers’ comments
As of today, Islanders have left over 70,000 comments on the site. That a mind-boggling number, averaging of over 27 comment each and every day for the past seven years. Thank you for that – it’s truly staggering.
With this massive comment milestone passed, we’ve been reconsidering our decision to make an account essential to comment on On The Wight, the ‘innovation’ that we introduced with the switch.
Opening up comments
While we’ve had hundreds of people register for accounts, we think we made a mistake. Readers have told us that they’ve had problems trying to leave comments when reading at the stories on their mobile (lots of people do) because they aren’t able to remember their passwords.
We’re going to try opening up comments to the non-registered again for a while to see how it goes. Those who have registered will continue to have the advantages they currently enjoy, plus some other enhancements that we’re planning to introduce.
If you already have an account, you will start to receive exclusive special offers, so if you don’t have one, get signed up now!
Thanks for the support
This year has been a massive one for us – the re-branding of VentnorBlog to On The Wight.
As you know the main reason for our name change was for us not to be perceived as ‘just’ about Ventnor. We’re delighted to let you know that the early signs are (one month in) that it’s already working. People now see On The Wight as about the whole of the Isle of Wight (even though, under the VB banner, we had been for years!).
Google search results better than ever
There’s no denying it – the re-brand was a huge amount of work, and happily, not only have we maintained the Google-topping search results that we used to have, but amazingly they’re even higher than they were before. Translated to the non-Web-obsessed, Island businesses and news that we write about have a greater chance of being found here On The Wight.
Looking forward to another year of innovation – and thanks again for all of your support.
