2010 Annual Report To Members

[Brian Scherzer]

Here it is, January 1st, 2011, and TGP continues to grow. I have left the 2009 Report as a sticky thread so that our members can compare where we are and where we seem to be headed as a website. To be as brief as possible, TGP remains solvent, primarily because of our supporting members. Our growth continues to be at a more rapid pace than I expected, with 16,000 new members having joined in the past year (now over 72,000 members). Let's get the statistics out of the way so that we can look at where we are heading. According to Google Analytics, for the month of December 2010 we had 523,520 different visitors and 1,776,777 visits, and a total of 17,887,240 pages viewed by those visitors.....in one month! It has been a struggle at times to keep up with such strong growth.

We promised last year to upgrade the servers, which we did by doubling the amount of RAM in each server. We did miss on our plan to add a user review site.....sorry! The good news for 2011 is that we have just leased new servers that are being prepared so that we can shift TGP to a more powerful server system this month. These servers are faster and have 50% more RAM than the current servers, plus we can add as much RAM as might be needed in the future. The current servers are maxed out and will be retired as soon as we make the switch. We have also settled on and purchased the user review software and our tech team is working on coding that will allow all members to not have to re-register on the TGP User Review site that should be opening in about a month.

In December we almost exceeded our allowed bandwidth (2500 gigs per month) for the first time in our history. The forums and the webzine are both seeing more traffic than ever before, and we anticipate that the review site will send us far over the edge. As a result, we have paid for additional bandwidth and have revised our "business plan" so that we do not have to raise the supporting member fees. We will likely allow ads on the review site as a means of paying for it but will NOT allow ads on the forums. Keeping the forums free of commercial interests remains part of our core philosophy in order to maintain our independence.

My thanks to the moderators here, who give their time and effort without any compensation. My thanks also to the businesses who have donated items for our giveaways to members. The giveaways are part of our philosophy. When approached by businesses to do reviews or when we are asked about advertising for businesses, we believe that the members should benefit. We do not allow the moderators or staff reviewers to receive items for free or even at a discount. Rather, the items reviewed are given away to our members so that they can benefit, plus the businesses get free exposure in those giveaways. We intend on continuing that practice for 2011.

Most of all, Scott and I would like to thank all members. It is the membership here that makes TGP what it is! Without your knowledge, there would be little of interest in the millions of posts that are now part of this website. We would also like to thank all of the members who chose to become supporting members. Thanks to you, there are still no ads on the forums and we have not had to go to the membership to ask for money to continue keeping TGP online. We expect 2011 to be a good year and we wish the best for everyone!

[Guitar55]

Thanks for the update. Nice job by the Admins, Mods and "tech team". Best forum on the Web!

[Mr. Kite]

Thanks for the great site and all the hard work!

[Blanket Jackson]

Thanks for the update, Brian. And once again, thanks to you and the other mods for the wonderful, thankless, and no doubt frustrating job of herding us music cats.

[russ]

Thanks to all in the 'office'!

[Hwoltage]

Originally Posted by Guitar55

Thanks for the update. Nice job by the Admins, Mods and "tech team". Best forum on the Web!

Agreed.

[DGTCrazy]

Thanks for the report, and great work! Long live TGP!

[Dexter.Sinister]

Thanks you all for your tirless work to make this a kind hang. All my best for 2011.

DS

[eugewong]

Thanks to all the mods, and to Brian and Scott especially. I do truly appreciate what you guys are doing. Bravo!

[supercollider]

Thanks guys! Appreciate your contribution to the forum!

[zzzezums]

thank you - wonderful site, continued success!

[Seektone]

Thanks Scott and Brian for keeping TGP real. This site is such an asset for all of us. Cheers to you and best wishes for 2011!

[jerseydrew]

Thank you for everything

[Dr. Tweedbucket]

Fantastic! Thanks for the report Brian, it's nice to see how things are growing and thanks for the smart planning to keep things running smooth for the future! Happy 2011!

[morsecode]

Thanks for making this the best place on the internet.