State of the Site Address

It's now over one year since this site relaunched (after many years of hiatus and failed attempts to get it back up and running again). I honestly wanted to take a moment to address all of you, the fans of this site, back at the one year anniversary (May 10, marked by the first new article in two years, Avengers: Age of Ultron), but then life happened and May was a complete mess. Thus now, 13 months in, we're going to do the one year address and just pretend it's the anniversary.

To start with, I want to thank everyone who has been coming a regularly reading all the content we've been posting. I know there's a lot of content Online at this point, so much media coming from so many sources, and we appreciate any time you spend on this site. Before we talk about anything else, we just want to thank you for your time and appreciation of the site. Now, onto old and new business:

Articles and Site Content

Over the course of its first year since the "Returns" relaunch, 491 articles were posted to Asteroid G. As a point of comparison the previous iterations of the site (the original Asteroid G, the Tumblr-based Musings of the Jewpacabra, and craptastic The Domain) only had a combined 210 articles over the course (off and on) of sixteen years. In a single year we managed to beat that by over 233%. I consider that quite the achievement.

Of course, part of that is due to having a regular schedule, including a number of features we started during the year like Monster Mondays, Arrowverse Thursdays, and Fantasy Franchise February. What this last year has prove is that once we commit to a bit, we really commit to it.

To that end we're going to continue with our regular features, rotating some of them in and out as schedules align (obviously right now with the ArrowverseWhen it was announced that the CW was creating a show based on the Green Arrow, people laughed. The CW? Really? Was it going to be teen-oriented like everything else on the network and be called "Arrow High"? And yet that one show, Arrow has spawned three spin-offs, various related shows and given DC a successful shared universe, the Arrowverse on TV and streaming. on its summer hiatus the Thursday feature isn't updating). But as long as we have ideas for cool features to highlight, for things we can regularly write about, this site will not lack for content.

Podcasts and Videos

And speaking of new content, this was the first year that our site has ever featured Podcasts. Our main series, (Not So) Live from Asteroid G just had its first season finale (Episode #25: Vampires and Browncoats and Dolls, Oh My!, devoted to the accomplishments, and sins, of Joss Wheddon). While that show is on hiatus for the next month (give or take a week or two), we will be running a side project, a special series of one-on-one interviews with gamers around the world. This first of these is already recorded and will pick up the schedule next week.

But we're also looking at ways to expand the amount of audio and video available from Asteroid G. The next big project will be taking our podcasts and making YouTube friendly versions of them, videos people can view anywhere so they can hear our dulcet tones in their ear-holes. Hopefully the first of these will be up soon as we take our time away from the main podcast do work on side projects like this.

After that, we really want to record some of our gaming sessions. As you may well know, I have a game company I run, Dodeca System, and we sell an RPG (that I wrote, not to toot my own horn), There's a Game in this Book. It's a fun and funny adventure setting and we have a blast with the gaming sessions we run in that world. Sooner or later we want to at least record the audio from those sessions and post them to the site, we just have to get around a couple of logistical hurdles before that's possible. It's in the cards, though, and hopefully by the time we're having next year's State of the Site Address a couple of game sessions will have been posted as well.

Site Improvements

I figure as you well know by now, I'm an obsessive site tinkerer and will regularly rework elements on this site as the whims strike. Heck, within this year alone the site has already undergone one revamp (along with a couple of minor updates to style and form). This is just the nature of the beast for a project I work on. And you can expect, moving forward, further updates are planned.

This biggest one for the year (although there's no set schedule for the work just yet) is a major overhaul of the behind the scenes structure of the site. This won't affect the layout or content overly much (although I'm sure I'll use it as an excuse to tweak some elements), but it will make updating and maintaining the site much easier. I won't post further updates on this just expect that at some point in the next year the site will be renovated and will look somewhat different (as it my way).

And then, after that, who knows? If new ideas for content or features come up, room will be made on the site to handle them. I know that in a few years, once my webcomic CVRPG ends, I'll want to continue creating some kind of comic-based content. None of those are planned to run for anywhere near the length of time as my current comic so I expect to host them as irregular updates here on Asteroid G. Honestly, considering the scope of content and projects attached to this site, just about anything can get hosted here and feel of-a-piece.

Contribute and Share

On that front, if you've ever had an itch to contribute to Asteroid G now it a great time to start. We're always accepting new content from anyone that might be interested and getting your idea up on the site is as easy as contacting us and sending us whatever you have for posting. We'll look it over, maybe suggest a few changes, and then get it posted quickly after that. It's a painless, easy process, so there's no reason not to contribute!

And then, while you're supporting the site, please take a moment to share us on social media and spread the word about the site. Getting us out there, sharing our coverage, and helping the spread the good word about this great site is the best way to help us out and keep this site thriving. And since we're 100% ad-free you don't have to worry about spreading around some evil corporate overlord just in it for the money. Money is nice, don't get us wrong, but we really just want to talk about geeky stuff and enjoy mass media. And, of course, if you haven't already, you can subscribe to our RSS Feeds (Article Feed and Podcast Feed) to get the latest site updates as soon as they're available.

Oh, and please make sure to update any bookmarks you might have for the site. When we started on May 10, 2018, we were just running as a subhost of The Inverted Dungeon, but late last year we switched to being on our own domain name once again, https://www.asteroidg.com. If you haven't already updated you links and bookmarks, take a moment to do that now. This helps our stat tracking so we can get a good idea of just how much traffic this site gets.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. Enjoy the site, the regular content, and all the extras. Until our next anniversary...