Plans for 2022

Do you all like the new look for the site? I opted to get started early this year because I got an ambitious schedule for January and February. A make-over has been long overdue, even though I did kinda love the bulky design I have used for years now. This is a lot less visually aggressive though and we really needed to increase the page width available for the actual articles.

This’ll be the first of many plans for 2022.

Before we dive into the new, though. Let’s take a moment to look back on 2021 and talk about the site’s performance.

The Numbers

Though these numbers sound amazing, it has to be noted that Reasons to Anime went through an incredible boom in Q1 and Q2 that, in hindsight, was not entirely natural. There were record-breaking days back-to-back and traffic that was consistently far higher than it had ever been before. This came crashing down in Q3, alongside my morale. Through hard work and figuring out how SEO works, I’ve been able to get a grip back on the site’s traffic. The daily amount of visitors is nowhere near as high as it was in April, but still higher than the daily average of 2020.

Special thanks

For their help in improving Reasons to Anime and its content, I’d like to thank the following people:

Iniksbane from In Search of No. 9 and Crow from Crow’s World of Anime for their frequent shout-outs to my articles.

TwistedRiver for proof-reading and providing initial feedback on some of the more challenges articles I published this year

ImoutoHeadpat, Taluun, and Deneolan for our group watches and discussions on anime.

Stian from Corrupt Save File for his support and sharing of my articles

Of course, I’d also like to thank all the wonderful people who read, liked, and shared my articles. Your continued support and enjoyment of Reasons to Anime means a lot to me, and encourages me to keep improving the website and my writing skills. Thank you!

Plans

Site-design

  • Further improvements to the new look & feel of the site layout.
  • I am still looking for an artist to actually design a more fitting banner. If you are interested, please use the contact form and link me to your portfolio. There is a budget for this, of course.
  • The categories for articles will be expanded to better reflect their contents. For example, new categories for “social justice”, “creators”, and “history” will be added.
  • An actual author’s bio will be added.
  • Older featured images will be phased out to make the new layout look better
  • A separate hentai category will be added.
  • Additional genres will be added to reduce confusion.
  • An age gate will be added for extreme content.
  • The intro page will be updated to reflect these changes.

General plans

  • I commit myself to increasing the quality of the articles and opinion pieces posted on Reasons to Anime. In particular, I intend to pursue more interviews and investigative pieces.
  • Planning to account for specific holidays has proven to be relatively difficult. As a trial, I have decided to plan ahead and theme all of February’s content after romance and erotica.
  • I want to talk about visuals novels more, following the success (and fun) of the Shuffle! review.
  • This year I swear I’ll set up a proper email address this time.

Technical

  • A majority of the content on Reasons to Anime has been updated to for SEO optimization. The remaining articles that are viable for this will be updated in the coming weeks.
  • Reasons to Anime’s license has been upgraded, which makes a migration to self-hosting unnecessary.
  • I am in the process of optimizing response time and general performance of the site.

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