Austin
07-01-2010, 12:15 PM
I would like to welcome everyone here at Amusement Park Authority to the summer! This will be a important month with everything happening. With that said lets get to the news:
Park Index
Over the last two weeks there has been some major headway on the development of the full Index. To start off we added 70+ US parks bring us to 244. Thinking it would take me longer then a week to do it I hadnt planned on doing more. Then I added 58 International Parks, boosting us to 301 parks. We still have 199 to go from reaching our goal of 500 but It shouldnt take more than a month at best to do it. http://amusementparkauthority.com/index.php?pageid=indexhub
Since we are discussing the Index I figured you guys should know about the next additions to happen to the index in terms of features. The major ones will add links directly to NPN's section they have for each park giving you informational articles at a click. Another will give you a link where you can purchase tickets for the parks. Then another will give you a link to a fansite for the park. I'm also considering branching off the Coaster section and adding a defunct coaster portion.
One last word on the Index, Nitro and Me are working on developing a project that will put all rides and coasters at a park on our own website and not rcdb. It will include stats when available, pictures and some other details. So all in all a good outlook on the growth of the index along with the site. For details about this project follow this link: http://amusementparkauthority.com/forums/showthread.php?t=612
Advertising
We ran a ad on google featuring the sites banner and got some mixed success out of it. It was shown 23,965 times so we definitely got the word out about us in a big way. I believe it contributed 2-3 new members to the site.
Flashchat
Some of you may have noticed that Flashchat was pretty much crippled for about two weeks a few days ago. I went in to make a performance improvement on it and then it pretty much fried itself. It is now back up and running and has been upgraded to 6.0.6 as well so check it out.
2010 Survey
I decided to make the surveys a annual part of the site to help gauge our growth, staff performance, and other things. Following the posting of this news update the 2010 Survey will be up. Its the basic set up as last years where you send it in and everything.
Vacation
From July 10th to the 18th most of the staff will be gone on vacation with limited activity on the site. Nitro left last week for a school field trip to Europe where he sadly wont get a chance to do any theme parks and as you all know on the 10th I'll be in a car on the way to Orlando for 7 days. I expect the site to run just as it would be on a normal day except this time all the rest of the staff will be handling daily ops until I get back at the least.
Username Issues
Recently a few members had a issue with their usernames where they turned out rainbow colored or bold. The cause of the issues was from a old add-on we added about 6 months ago that we never really used. Its been completely removed from our servers and everyone is back to normal.
New Profile Options
For those who noticed this, we added two new profile fields: Home Park and Favorite Roller Coaster. In other news its a minor addition but can help others get to know you better.
APA Online Day & One Year Anniversary Plans
With the one year anniversary of the site coming up (July 27th) I decided to move up Online Day from the fall to the 27th to help celebrate the sites one year of operation. APA Online day at this point will have a quiz on the sites history, and possibly a second on theme parks and coasters. Then possibly a scavenger hunt on the site. I'm working to set up a shop on vbexperience were you use the points you earn every day to buy stuff in the shop. If I get it set up you will earn points from the quizzes and a new birthday award for the scavenger hunt. As for our plans for the anniversary, I'm planning on getting our Arcade up to 300 games or as many as 400 games seeing as how almost all the games have been played so far. Another way I will honor the date is by adding between 50 and 100 parks to the index. All I can say is it seems like one year went by really fast.
So there you have it, our first July update. We should have another halfway into the month or after I get back.
Park Index
Over the last two weeks there has been some major headway on the development of the full Index. To start off we added 70+ US parks bring us to 244. Thinking it would take me longer then a week to do it I hadnt planned on doing more. Then I added 58 International Parks, boosting us to 301 parks. We still have 199 to go from reaching our goal of 500 but It shouldnt take more than a month at best to do it. http://amusementparkauthority.com/index.php?pageid=indexhub
Since we are discussing the Index I figured you guys should know about the next additions to happen to the index in terms of features. The major ones will add links directly to NPN's section they have for each park giving you informational articles at a click. Another will give you a link where you can purchase tickets for the parks. Then another will give you a link to a fansite for the park. I'm also considering branching off the Coaster section and adding a defunct coaster portion.
One last word on the Index, Nitro and Me are working on developing a project that will put all rides and coasters at a park on our own website and not rcdb. It will include stats when available, pictures and some other details. So all in all a good outlook on the growth of the index along with the site. For details about this project follow this link: http://amusementparkauthority.com/forums/showthread.php?t=612
Advertising
We ran a ad on google featuring the sites banner and got some mixed success out of it. It was shown 23,965 times so we definitely got the word out about us in a big way. I believe it contributed 2-3 new members to the site.
Flashchat
Some of you may have noticed that Flashchat was pretty much crippled for about two weeks a few days ago. I went in to make a performance improvement on it and then it pretty much fried itself. It is now back up and running and has been upgraded to 6.0.6 as well so check it out.
2010 Survey
I decided to make the surveys a annual part of the site to help gauge our growth, staff performance, and other things. Following the posting of this news update the 2010 Survey will be up. Its the basic set up as last years where you send it in and everything.
Vacation
From July 10th to the 18th most of the staff will be gone on vacation with limited activity on the site. Nitro left last week for a school field trip to Europe where he sadly wont get a chance to do any theme parks and as you all know on the 10th I'll be in a car on the way to Orlando for 7 days. I expect the site to run just as it would be on a normal day except this time all the rest of the staff will be handling daily ops until I get back at the least.
Username Issues
Recently a few members had a issue with their usernames where they turned out rainbow colored or bold. The cause of the issues was from a old add-on we added about 6 months ago that we never really used. Its been completely removed from our servers and everyone is back to normal.
New Profile Options
For those who noticed this, we added two new profile fields: Home Park and Favorite Roller Coaster. In other news its a minor addition but can help others get to know you better.
APA Online Day & One Year Anniversary Plans
With the one year anniversary of the site coming up (July 27th) I decided to move up Online Day from the fall to the 27th to help celebrate the sites one year of operation. APA Online day at this point will have a quiz on the sites history, and possibly a second on theme parks and coasters. Then possibly a scavenger hunt on the site. I'm working to set up a shop on vbexperience were you use the points you earn every day to buy stuff in the shop. If I get it set up you will earn points from the quizzes and a new birthday award for the scavenger hunt. As for our plans for the anniversary, I'm planning on getting our Arcade up to 300 games or as many as 400 games seeing as how almost all the games have been played so far. Another way I will honor the date is by adding between 50 and 100 parks to the index. All I can say is it seems like one year went by really fast.
So there you have it, our first July update. We should have another halfway into the month or after I get back.