Listverse Update For May 2009

Hi all – it has been some time since we had an update because I have been extremely busy working on the details of the future of the site. There are a few administrative issues that you should all know, so this post deals with those.

By the end of this month we will have moved the site to WordPress VIP which is a special hosting set up that WordPress (the people who wrote the software this site runs on) run for high traffic blogs. Some of their current customers are FoxNews blogs, Flickr Blogs, Failblog, ICanHasCheezburger, and the Time Magazine blogs. The new setup will not change much on the site, but it will give us the stability that we have been longing for since day one. It will put an end to downtime or quirky behavior. It will also reduce the cost of running the site and cut my admin duties by half. There are a couple of caveats, the biggest of which is:

Wordpress VIP doesn’t allow us to transfer our registered users because they have a different set of terms and conditions which our users must accept. This means that people who are registered on the site will need to re-register on wordpress.com. Unfortunately not all usernames will be available so we may have to get used to a few nicknames being slightly different after the move. This is, of course, entirely optional, as you will be able to post using your current nickname on the new system – just not as a registered user. There are no benefits being lost in this move so I hope that people won’t mind too much. The commenting system will remain the same and all comments will remain intact.

I recently made some changes to the front page of the site – the main change is the introduction of tab links to popular and controversial lists. I have added 5 pages of popular lists but still need to finish adding the controversial ones. We are using comment count as a measure of controversy. Hopefully these new categories will make it easier for people to find our best content. You may also have noticed the new “Share This List” option at the top and bottom of each list. Clicking this will open a small window which will let you email, SMS, twitter, facebook, or share the site using all of the most popular social networking and bookmarking sites. Be sure to use this regularly.

I was able to negotiate recently with the person who registered the Twitter “listverse” account some time ago so it is now in our hands. If you use Twitter and want to include our latest lists in your twitter feed, you can follow Listverse on twitter. We have over 1,000 followers already so why not join in the fun? I will also be using this feed for occasional site updates if they are needed.

NOTE: This item is now defunct – I have made my own replacement logo (using the same symbol but different layout and font).

In March we had a competition for list submissions. The contributions were large in number and high in quality – many thanks. The winner of the competition has (finally!) been selected and it is: Blogball for the 10 Fascinating Only Existing Photographs. Congratulations Blogball – please contact me so we can organize the delivery of the $150.00 prize.

We have moved the site forums! This is because we need to get all of our site functionality off the site before the WordPress move. The new address for the forums is http://forums.listverse.com. If you go there and have trouble staying logged in, leave the page, delete your cookies, and try again. The move has modified the cookie structure which can cause a few blips. Thanks to everyone for being so patient with this move!

The Ultimate Book of Top 10 Lists was completed on time and send to the publisher. It was a hell of a lot more work than I expected but it was well worth it. It should be published and on-sale by November this year – in time for the Christmas rush. If you want to pre-order a copy of it you can already do so. Here is an amazon link for The Ultimate Book of Top 10 Lists. The pre-order price is only $10.17 which is a real bargain. The price may return to its recommended price of $14 when it is published so it is a good idea to get in now.