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How it all started
Back in the 1990s I owned a
travel company that primarily acted as a travel wholesaler, selling travel
to the South Pacific (this made sense being as how I'm originally from New
Zealand). I wanted to find another destination that we could grow
the business into, and preferably one where people would feel the need to
use a travel agency's services, and preferably one in the northern
hemisphere that would give us an opposite set of busy and not busy
seasons. We first tried Britain, but this failed the "people need
the help of a travel agency" test, so then after looking around, we felt
that there might be a business opportunity selling travel to Russia.
This marked the start of my interest in a country which up until then had
seemed remote and forbidding.
After several trips to
Russia and some effort in the marketplace, we decided that selling travel
to Russia was "too hard", but in the meantime I had not only fallen in
love with the country, but also rekindled my love of stamp collecting, and
also, one other love issue occurred as well - I met and married a Russian
lady who is now my wife! So, in one way or another, I built up a
long term and ongoing association with the country.
Getting the Name
I had several business
ideas about how to cultivate business between Russia and the west, and in
this modern day and age, the first thing I needed was, of course, a web
site! After some searching, and unsurprisingly finding that names
like russia.com were already taken, I settled on the closest variant
possible - rossia.com. Interestingly, this is a more correct
transliteration of the way that Russians spell their country name (and
pronounce it, too), and it always irks me to see them showing it as "rossija"
on their modern stamps. I can understand rossia, I can accept
rossiya, but rossija just makes no sense (from an English speaker's point
of view, that is!).
Anyway, for better or for
worse, we ended up with this website name, and some parts of it are now
used to promote various business ventures.
Initial "non-site"
It was probably some time
early in 1999 when I joined Phil Guptill's "Stamp Trader List" - an
excellent resource that results in emails on an occasional basis from
collectors all around the world. Although few of these email
contacts actually result in the exchange of stamps, it is still a noble
project that Phil is carrying out. When I signed up for this, I
looked at the space for "web address" and thought "I should have a stamp
web site" and so created an address for a web site, and followed up by
creating one of those dreadful "under construction" web sites that had
nothing on it at all. Slightly better than getting a 404 error -
page not found - but only just!
After having done this,
various other things distracted me and nothing much more happened for
close on a year.
Start of the "real" site - 2 May
2000
I had just added some
statistics and hit logging programs to record visitor activity to the
rossia.com domain back in April, and discovered to my surprise that the
empty stamp page was getting a steady number of hits most days. This
reminded me about the whole unfulfilled plan to set up a web site, and
having some spare time, I decided to actually do something about it.
While this might be off by
a day or so, it appears from my logs that probably May 2 marked the launch
of the real site with a proper home page and a couple of pages hung off
it. Initially I couldn't really think of what to put up on the web
site, but then ideas started flowing fast and furiously! My
intention was - and is - to try and add some original and helpful content
and to have this site as very much more than another dealer site simply
with a for sale list and little else.
Rapid Evolution and Continual
Change
If I may modestly say so,
this site has been growing rapidly and has been continually changing since
its inception in May 2000. We've gone from 0 to 360+ pages of
information, and in total 3600+ files of images and data. Hopefully
this will continue into the future, and you should revisit from time to
time to see what is new and what is different. In particular, unlike
traditional print publishing, things can and do continue to change after
they are first published onto the web site. As I get more
information, more experience, and more feedback, I change my opinions and
ideas (don't we all!) and will from time to time add to or change the
articles on the site accordingly in an attempt to keep them "state of the
art" and fresh.
Diary Record of Developments
(From most recent
to oldest - if you're reading this for the first time, it might make more
logical sense to start at the bottom and work up the page)
17 December 01 :
We won another award - a prestigious Three Star award from FIP. This
was awarded to us back in October, I think. But no-one told us and I
found out merely by chance while reading the latest Rossica journal!
What a strange way for the FIP to behave?
10 December 01 :
We won another award, this time from stamp2.com. Its always nice to
be appreciated. I note also that after some 'tweaking' I managed to
get the site back on top of Google searches for 'Russian stamps'.
26 August 01 :
I finally found the time to do the research and then write up an article
on an issue that has been troubling me for some considerable time.
My conclusions surprised me and may surprise you too. Go have a look
at the article that discusses whether Russian
commemorative issues should be considered as valid bona fide postal issues
or not. Let me know your own thoughts on this slightly heretical
analysis! I also continued to work on the mystery of the letters
that were allegedly seized by the KGB (see last week's notes, below) and
to my delight, a friend in Moscow managed to contact a couple of the
people that had been working at the radio station when the letters went
missing, and the information he supplied seems to now provide the most
likely explanation. How nice to actually be able to solve the
mystery, 12 years after it occurred. Meantime, we have broken
through the 4000 file point and are at 4050 files.
19 August 01 :
The last week has seen me spending considerable time expanding the section
on scanning stamps, and it has now grown to
seven pages and 42 different illustrations of various scan settings and
techniques. I do hope this proves useful (and understandable!).
Another fascinating addition to the site are some
never delivered letters from Russian
schoolchildren writing to potential pen-friends in the US that were
impounded by the KGB, now available for sale - why don't you get one or
two and write to the author (who is probably now in their 20s).
12 August 01
: More steady additions,
and the zemstvo section now has images on stamps from three quarters of
the issuing authorities. In 'behind the scenes' activity, I upgraded
the web editing program I use from FrontPage 2000 to FrontPage 2002.
This was/is not, alas, a painless process. It transpires that there
is a 'known bug' in the software which can mess up the formatting of web
pages, and for several days I wrestled with attempting to resolve this
'known bug' until finally squashing it. Unfortunately, the cure also
involved the loss of every 'navigation bar' on the site, which took a
considerable time to recreate. Some other problems with this new
program remain, however. <sigh> The good news for the week is
that we're on the verge of attaining 4000 pages total on the site - we
enjoyed a brief period at 4003, and now, after some cleaning up, we're at
3996 files total. I'll go out on a limb and set an objective of 5000
files by the end of the year.
5 August 01 :
A momentous week. To my astonishment, we've broken through 400 web
pages this week, almost without realising it. I've added a page on
identifying Scott #1 (compared
to #2s masquerading as #1s) and also started a new section on
scanning stamps, as well as continuing to split
pages that are getting too big, and all of a sudden, we're at 401 pages!
The number of files also is increasing, and responding to the challenge I
set myself only a week ago we're already within reaching distance of 4000
files. Lastly, an email from a visitor advises that the site has
been featured in Stanley Gibbons' Stamp Monthly magazine.
29 July 01 :
Now that the 'Today in History' database is almost full, it makes sense to
allow visitors to check other dates as well as simply present today's data
each day. A new page has been released that provides this
functionality. In other developments, we
broke through the 3650 file count today, of which 370 are web pages and
the balance mainly images. Might we exceed 4000 by the end of the
year? It is getting harder, (because there is less that needs to be
added) but I'll give it a try! :)
22 July 01 :
Progress continues apace. I've added the latest Postrider (#48) to
the journal index, and in total we now have 3527 files within the website
(most of the additions in the last week have been additional stamp
images). Now that we're starting to get some pricing data running
over a year in some cases, it is possible to observe pricing trends - at
least, in theory! In reality, I comment on this subject on a
new page.
15 July 01 : I
worked out how to reconnect to the SQL database for maintenance purposes,
and so most days now sees new information in the front page 'Today in
History' box. I've also indexed CSRP's Postrider Journal #47 - we
have over 3000 articles in our index now, making this an increasingly
valuable research tool. In total there are 3444 files within the
website, making a total of 125MB of data (plus the SQL database as well).
28 May 01 : A
long time since I've last added to this page, or, indeed, to much of the
site at all. Unfortunately I've done something to my network
environment meaning that I can't access the machine with the SQL database
from my development machine, and this is making maintaining/updating those
parts of the website that rely on the SQL database a 'non-trivial' item.
I had upgraded the SQL database machine to Win2K and now I can't access it
from my development machine - fortunately the web server machine can still
access it, and until I can work out a solution to this problem, I'm
leaving well alone! So the daily "today in history" material is more
or less frozen until I can get back into the SQL machine, meaning that few
days have features between now and mid September when we start reusing
material from last year. I added an interesting
review on stereoscopic microscopes
today that might help if you're considering such an (expensive)
acquisition yourself.
2 May 01 : Our
first birthday! I'll confess that it went largely unheralded; I've
been suffering from some severe time constraints the last few months, but
even so, it is pleasing to see the site now in existence for over one
year.
17 March 01 :
I've been worrying for some time about how to improve the 'scalability' of
the zemstvo section, and finally came up with a slightly altered layout
that hopefully makes it a bit easier for you to get to exactly the stamp
you're looking for and certainly makes it easier for me to split pages as
needed in the future.
9 December 00 :
We've now achieved our (most recent!) target for the year. Indeed,
it is interesting to review the various targets we have set for the
websize by the end of year :
- On 27 May, we hoped to
exceed 100 pages by the end of the year. We met this objective
some time prior to 8 June.
- On 1 Aug, we hoped to
exceed 200 pages by the end of the year. We met this objective
some time prior to 22 August.
- On 14 Sep, we hoped to
exceed 300 pages by the end of the year. We met this objective
only a few days later on 19 September.
- On 30 Sep, we hoped to
exceed 350 pages and 2500 files by the end of the year. We finally
exceeded the page count today, and met the file count some time prior to
11 October.
- On 23 Nov, we hoped to
exceed 350 pages and 3000 files by the end of the year. We finally
exceeded the page count today, and met the file count some time in early
December.
Yes - today we are now at
353 pages, 3313 files and a total web size (excluding SQL) of 122MB.
I hope you find at least several of the pages helpful on your visit!
:)
30 November 00 :
I am so pleased to now proudly announce that our Journal Database has
grown magnificently. It now contains index information to articles
from Rossica issues 1-111, British Journal of Russian Philately issues
1-65, Post-Rider issues 1-23 and 41-46, Pochta issues 1-5, Soviet
Collector issues 1-26, Russian American Philatelist 1-24 and Russian
Philatelist 1-11. This is a phenomenal research tool, and our
sincere thanks to Ivo Steijn for donating a treasure trove of information
from an earlier database that we've now imported into our SQL format.
This conversion effort has consumed a substantial amount of time, and the
result is amazingly valuable - now if only we could get all the underlying
articles online too! :) We plan to improve the searching
functions at some time to give you more ways to locate helpful data, but
for now, it is still a very useful resource. Other developments over
the past week have seen the total file count swell to 2956 and the web in
total is just over 110MB - plus, of course, a greatly enlarged SQL
database.
23 November 00 :
Today is Thanksgiving in the US, but site development continues apace,
even on this most hallowed of holidays! :) There has been a
tremendous amount of extra material added to the site in the last week,
including an interesting new page on Expertizing and a wealth of extra
data. I'm particularly pleased with the progress on the zemstvo
information - we now have 108 of the 163 issuing districts represented,
and a growing amount of supporting information. We're up to 2857
files total and 336 pages, and I'm now more confident that we'll close the
year above 350 pages (and wouldn't it be great to exceed 3000 files as
well!). Total web size now is at 107MB.
16 November 00 :
A quick update on what has happened in the last almost month of time.
On the face of it, not much, with most of the work continuing on some
major behind the scenes activity. It continues to seem that most of
our structure is either now in place or is being added invisibly to the
database, and so our page count has grown by only two to 329, although the
number of files has increased more noticeably (ongoing addition of images)
to 2722 - nearly one hundred more than the last report.
23 October 00 :
Another milestone passes by without even the slightest bump. The
total size of the web files - excluding the SQL backend and Access front
end (for maintaining the database over the LAN) - now exceeds 100MB.
We've also released an improved version of the journal searching function
(nicer formatting and a logic bug fixed), and other than that, most of the
work remains "behind the scenes" on some major projects. We've up to
327 pages and 2628 files. With our new focus on putting data into
the SQL database rather than into freestanding pages, I won't be too
embarrassed if we miss the 350 page target for the year, as the new
SQL-based data represents a great number of "page equivalents"; indeed the
whole issue of how to continue measuring the progress and growth of the
website becomes somewhat unclear. Without revealing too much of as
yet incomplete development projects, future enhancements will actually be
replacing current pages with more backend database material instead, and
so it is likely that the physical page count will decrease, while the
"logical" page count will be increasing at the same time.
18 October 00 :
And another "neat" feature is released to a tumultuous welcome.
Well, in my dreams, perhaps! But I can't tell you how pleased I am
to now unveil our "Research Library" section, with the "crown jewel" in
this section being the indexing of back issues of the Canadian Society of
Russian Philately's Journal "Post-Rider". It has struck me that
there is an enormous wealth of information that, for most people, is
"locked away" in older publications and may as well not exist at all,
because people don't know it exists and don't know how to find it.
Accordingly we're embarking on a very ambitious project to index and
catalog a lot of this material, and that is not all! We're going to
do a lot more than just passively catalog it. We're also scanning
the material and will be publishing CDroms to make the data readily
available to all collectors, conveniently and affordably. Stay tuned
for further details, and for now, we have nine of the 46 issues of the
CSRP Journal indexed (there are 243 articles in these nine issues alone!),
and three of the issues scanned preparatory to CDrom publication.
The site remains at around 324 pages and is up to 2573 files.
11 October 00 :
Another "neat" new feature has been added to the site. Our Links
section has been reworked and now is an Active Server Page supported by
another part of the growing "behind the scenes" SQL database server.
Links can now be featured in multiple categories to assist better matching
on the part of visitors' interests, and each link entry includes not only
a brief site description but also a thumbnail of their home page.
Our close working partnership with the WSRP has grown to the point where
we're now delighted and honored to be hosting parts of their website here
(better data bandwidth than that available internationally from Minsk in
Belarus). Our own site count is now up to 324 pages and 2541 files,
nicely passing the year-end goal for total files, but we still have a long
way to go to get to the year-end goal for total pages.
30 September 00 :
Another win - We've been judged "Stamp Site of the Week" by a
site
that has appointed itself as a judge of these things (and who are we to
question their good sense!). It is very nice to get such
recognition. Meantime, most of the growth in the last five days has
been in the "behind the scenes" category. I have done a little bit
of rearranging and actually managed to consolidate and delete a few pages,
but with additions we're still sitting around 320 pages, and we now have
exactly 2400 files (strange - earlier today it was showing 2403, and I
haven't deleted anything!). My end-of-year objectives are to exceed
350 pages and 2500 files, however with the concentration of new material
going into a separate database rather than into the simple count of pages
and files, this may not occur, even though the site may be growing
substantially in the process.
25 September 00 :
We're Number One!
:) I just did a search on Google and discovered that it lists us as
the top result when people search for information on Russian stamps.
In total it presents 52,300 different matches, and this site is presented
as the top match. Wow. And we also achieved number one
position on a couple of the hit counters that we have on some of our
pages, although this wasn't quite so deserved because it was only on a
couple of new hit counting sites that don't yet have many stamp sites.
However, it looks great to see the number "1" on these logos, even if only
for a day or two! Other than this, slow visible progress only to
report - adding a "Today in History" entry and stamp related image for
each day is quite time consuming and occasionally very challenging.
There is something massively exciting going on in the background, but I
won't disclose any more until it is operational. We have approx 320
pages and 2352 files total. Glossary entries have marginally
increased to 124.
21 September 00 :
Another bit of exciting progress today with the release of our "Today in
History" feature on the home page. Now, each day when you visit the
site, you'll be advised of what important Russian or Philatelic events
occurred on that day - or, at least, you will be advised of these
once I've populated the database with entries for all 366 days!
Suggestions for events to add to the database are welcomed.... After
splitting some overly large pages, we're at approx 320 pages and 2310
files total.
19 September 00 :
At last! I have finally obtained a copy of the new Scott 2001
catalog (see the reviews section for a review). I have been holding
off adding any more auction prices so far this month in the anticipation
of being able to start using the new Scott pricing, and so effective for
all September valuations, I'll use the new Scott 2001 pricing. In
case you are wondering, there are a lot more price changes for this
edition than for the last edition, but, alas, as many seem to be
reductions in value as are increases in value. I'm also going to
declare today as seeing us reach a massive 300 pages, and we have 2218
files.
14 September 00 :
Another evolutionary step for the site today. I'm just about to list
some stamps for sale on eBay and thought I may as well also offer them for
sale on the website too, especially those items that I have more than one
or two of. I accordingly added a section that in time to come will
hopefully be full of goodies to tempt you all (as of now it has a mere
four items) - and which may generate a meagre bit of funding to pay for my
continued buying excesses! :) In other news, our Glossary
entries are now up to 114, so we're well over my initial target of 100,
and even though all these glossary entries are in a single file, in total
the site has grown to 290 pages and 2178 files. A 300+ page website
looks increasingly achievable, and I have to smile to re-read the hope
expressed on 27 May that we may reach what seemed like an impossible
target of 100 pages by the end of the year!
7 September 00 :
A major achievement today - our first Active Server Page is now fully
operational. The Glossary Page
has been rewritten to now draw data from a SQL database, which will permit
the glossary to scale more or less indefinitely to as many entries as can
be added, while still remaining fast loading and easy to navigate.
Now, it is a relatively "simple" task merely to add more and more glossary
entries (and images) to fill up the database (at the end of the day today
there are 41 - I'd like to quickly get it to 100). We're at 264
pages and 2098 files; it doesn't seem fair that a day and more of coding
and data entry to redo the glossary page didn't actually add to the page
count at all! :)
4 September 00 :
A busy Labor Day weekend for me, with changes to the home page and the
addition of some exciting new material. I finally wrote an
Introductory piece on "Why collect Russian stamps" and have also completed
(? - well, at least done enough to now publish) a section on learning to
read and pronounce Russian. I'm very pleased with this section on
learning to read Russian - it is actually quite a simple thing to learn,
and this is also the first time that I've used the Adobe Acrobat software
to create web material (it was necessary so as to ensure that everyone can
see the Cyrillic that I was using). One other accomplishment that I
hope is of use is a rewrite of the introduction to Chuchin's zemstvo
catalog - rewritten to make it more helpful and easier to understand.
This is an excellent introduction to the subject of zemstvo issues, and I
hope will be useful. I'm starting to get a better vision of the
future "look and feel" of the site, and I'm reducing the size of the font
on most pages accordingly. Lastly, I discovered to my horror and
embarrassment that the home page was not displaying correctly in Netscape
browsers - an annoying subtle incompatibility between Frontpage formatting
and Netscape's interpretation of it was unexpectedly messing up things.
A quick tweak and it is all fixed, but the nuisance of all of this is that
really I need to check every page in both browsers (and how many other
browsers, too, I wonder!) to ensure that they are formatting more or less
as I expect them to. We're at 262 pages and 2051 files.
1 September 00 :
I added a series of somewhat irrelevant pages about Russia in general to
the site - maybe of interest to the broader Russophiles amongst us, and in
doing so, this brought our total page count over the 250 mark - we're now
at 259, and there are a lot of pages that I need to split because they
have become too lengthy. I'm continuing to add more zemstvo related
material as well, and, as soon as they arrive, will be the proud owner of
over 120 of these fascinating stamps myself! In particular, I'm very
pleased with the results on the zemstvo regional info/mapping page - this
involved creating 70 different specialised maps - a project that truly
took all day, but the net result is very worthwhile (I think). And,
after reflecting on the fact that eight or more hours of effort reflected
in the addition of one single web page to the site, I thought you might be
interested in another measure of the total "size" of the site as well.
As of this evening, the web site comprises, in total, a mix of 2045
different files - images, web pages, and various "control" type files such
as for the text indexing.
26 August 00 :
It has been a very
busy few days! I've been adding substantially to the zemstvo pages,
with more information including Chuchin values and some more general
information about each issuing authority. In addition, I've been
adding lots more zemstvo images and data, and the net result at present is
that we have 93 of the 163 issuing districts now with some information
provided - more than half. And the site as a whole is now up to 242
pages. I added some interesting sales data for a lot of Offices in
China stamps as well - it appears that the auction image contains catalog
information dating from a 1936 catalog. Guess what has happened to
the prices on these stamps in the 64 years since then? Well, if you
guessed that prices had gone up, I'm sorry. In general terms they
have gone down in real dollar terms by about 2000%!!! Now try and
tell me that stamps are a good investment..... :( I'm also
experimenting a bit more with the overall look and feel of the site, as
can be seen by the change in this page. Do you like it?
23 August 00
: I just wanted to share
with you a bit of amusement I came across while adding an auction result.
A set of five MNH stamps was offered with an opening bid of 1c and a
catalog value of $2.90 (Scott 5379-83). The auction closed with only
one bidder, who ended up buying the five stamps for the 1c opening bid!
Wow. While the stamps were definitely worth much less than catalog
value, I don't think either the buyer or seller expected the auction to
close for only 1c, and this does show very clearly the unpredictable
nature of eBay and the "risks" that sellers take when offering material at
low starting prices.
22 August 00 :
I'll pause to
dramatically wipe the sweat off my brow. After a major marathon here
and on eBay, we are at 206 pages. I've been indulging in an eBay
orgy of bidding on a sudden profusion of zemstvos that have been dropped
onto the market by a Russian seller. At present I have over 100
current eBay bids! And, by adding information on the zemstvos that
this seller has already sold (yes, some to me!) I've grown the zemstvo
section to now having details on over 60 of the 160 or so different
issuing authorities. This has also caused the page count to swell to
its new total of 206, so, all in all, a pretty productive week since I
last recorded progress. Now I'm torn between hoping that all my bids
will win, and the financial fear of the implications of the cost of paying
for a sudden mass of zemstvos if they are all successful! :)
16 August 00
: A massive change
today, involving the change in url of the homepage itself. I should
have thought further ahead than I did when I first created the homepage -
I now want to add some asp elements to the page which requires changing
the suffix of the page from .htm to .asp to make them work properly.
And I took the advantage at the same time to shorten the URL.
Hopefully the new URL -
http://www.rossia.com/stamps - will last longer than the old one did!
Ah, but such is the price of progress. :) Lastly, if anyone
has reached the old home page, please would they be as kind as to tell the
site that referred them of our changed address.
13 August 00 :
Today saw the start of a major
change in underlying approach to the design and structure of the site.
Typically, "personal" websites tend to be fiercely independent and
somewhat anarchistic and fragmented, with any particular subject enjoying
the presence of many personal websites, most of which have a large degree
of duplicated material and little unique extra material! In an
attempt to rationalise both this website and your web browsing experience
- you don't want to waste your time visiting websites that have similar
content any more than I want to waste my time creating it! - we are now
working in more close partnership with the World Society of Russian
Philately website in Minsk, Belarus. Our own attempt at a discussion
board met with very little activity on it, and so we are now sharing their
discussion board which is much more active. In addition, our own
attempt at a "Mystery Stamp" section, while involving some participation,
was again somewhat limited and so we are sharing their similar section
(they refer to it as a "Display Room"). We hope to continue to
develop shared resources with the WSRP (and any other appropriate) site so
that we can jointly develop a better total Russian philatelic resource
than we can separately. I hope you approve!
10 August 00
: After a day of messing
about and failing to get it working correctly, I've finally managed to get
a site full text search function working. This is very convenient
and addresses a problem I've even encountered myself - I know that
something is somewhere on the site, but I can't remember where! This
should solve the "information overload" for at least the next little
while. And, page-wise, we're up to 188 pages, so progress continues
in many directions.
4 August 00
: I've redesigned the
main entry page that accesses into the stamp image and value database, and
have also added a new page (linked to the main entry page) that tabulates
for the three different main catalogs their numbering on a year by year
basis from 1857 through to the present time. Hopefully this
information is helpful. And we're now at 180 pages, by the way!
:)
1 August 00
: We ended July and
moved into August on a fairly triumphant note, with visitation levels
climbing steadily and 31 July being a new record showing a new record
number of 19 unique visitors. We're climbing back up the ratings on
the two web counter sites, and are back to the same 21 and 7 that we were
at in mid June. This is actually good, because since that time, both
of the measuring sites have almost doubled the number of sites they are
measuring each day, so to maintain these positions is actually a major
accomplishment. Today also marked a formal change in catalog; when I
refer to Michel values (admittedly an infrequent occurrence) I will now be
using 1999/2000 values rather than the earlier 1995/6 values that I had
been using to this point.
We now have 171 pages of
data, and reaching 200 pages by the end of the year is seeming
increasingly feasible, although, as I've said before, the rate of page
growth must slow as more and more image data is already present and
additional data is more likely to be in the form of text rather than
images. Speaking only for myself, I'm often times reluctant to
extend my stamp collecting into less familiar areas because I'm not
certain if I'm buying stamps at fair prices or not, and I myself now feel
the benefit of being able to look up my own site and check to see if some
of the less common "Back of the Book" type issues have been selling for
high or low values so as to know what to offer. I'm now starting to
get some multiple sales data for thinly traded issues such as zemstvos and
it is interesting to see the huge range of price which similar (or
identical!) stamps sell for. I hope it is proving helpful to you,
too.
22 July 00
: Added some more stamp
valuation data (is this a never-ending task or what!) and this required
some more pages to be added (for additional Zemstvo districts) and some
pages that had become too big to be split. New total page-count for
the site - 161 pages!
19 July 00
: Okay, this isn't
strictly a site development, but it sure is exciting to me. I'm now
the proud owner of a used Scott #1, with both a hand cancel (in the form
of an X) and also part of a machine cancel too. Scott values at $375
and modesty prevents me from admitting to how much I paid for it - that
and the fact that I now want to protect its value in case I ever wish to
sell it again! :)
10 July 00
: Just back home after a
two and a half week trip to Europe - not to Russia, just Austria, Germany,
and Britain; however, I did buy a couple of new catalogs that I'll be
reviewing shortly so all was not "wasted". Of course, what is the
first thing that happens within minutes of me leaving - an extended power
cut exceeds the server's UPS life and kills the website, not recovering
when power is finally restored. Fortunately I discover this and
arrange for a friend to repower up the server after "only" a couple of
days. :( However, as a balancing bit of good news, we've
finally been indexed into Google. I'd been very keen for this to
occur - it is the search engine I use myself, but am still astonished to
discover that now 85% of our web search hits come from Google based
searches!!! Visitation numbers slowly increase as a result of this.
And now, back to the "drudgery" of inputting in some more auction sales
data to keep this up to date and fresh.
12 June
: I "took the plunge"
today and added another section to the valuation data - this section being
for covers. It has always been in my "too hard" pile to understand
covers and their values - lots more variables on top of the stamp values
themselves, but I realised that if it is complicated and confusing for me,
it may be similarly complicated/confusing for you, too. So we'll
start adding some cover sales data, too, and maybe after a while will be
able to start to build up some rough "rule of thumb" valuation guides.
Note that although I didn't start this page until 12 June, I am validly
showing some auction sales in May by going back and dredging out some
interesting earlier sales. After adding some more sales data
elsewhere on the site, I had to subdivide some more pages, and the net
result is that we're now at nearly 140 pages.
11 June
: We're now on the high
side of 125 pages, and this morning also saw us move up the rankings of
the two "top site" counters to 21 and 7 respectively. As I said
before, I suspect this is not sustainable, and as more stamp sites of
broader appeal join these rating engines, we'll probably drop down the
lists. Oh well, it is exciting while it happens. This morning,
being a rainy Sunday morning, saw me inside working on the web site -
okay, same as normal, but at least feeling less guilty about it than I do
when it is a lovely day and the lawns are pleading with me to be cut!
I've added a discussion board with some trepidation - the trepidation
being as to whether anyone will participate in any discussions or not.
I've seen such things on other web sites and they typically have so few
messages that they are a sad thing to see. Hopefully this one will
prove helpful/useful/popular. I suspect that I'm feeling "lonely" or
something because I'm starting to feel a bit depressed at the fact that,
notwithstanding having had some hundreds of different visitors, with
people working their way around the site, viewing as many as 380 or so
images and pages in the process, I haven't, to date, had a single word of
feedback from anyone. To try and improve the two-way flow of
information, I've also added a feedback form to make it easier for people
to comment on the site. I really do want to know what is helpful and
what is not, what is useful and what is not, so I can more fruitfully
direct the future development of the site accordingly.
8 June
: Wow. A milestone
passed on our road to - well, to wherever it is we are going. The
page count, as of this evening, has now broken through 100, and we're at a
very solid 110 pages in total. I'm surprised, and hopefully you're
pleased! :) And still on the subject of numbers, we're
consistently ranking about number 23 on one of the two popularity ranking
engines, and, to my surprise, way up at number 10 on the other site.
I suspect this isn't sustainable, but we'll see. You can see our
rankings just by looking at the numbers in the images at the bottom of our
home page. Please keep visiting - maybe
we'll make number one yet! :)
5 June :
Another busy week, with some lovely additions to the site in terms of
"Back of the Book" pages. It is so interesting to finally be able to
codify for my own personal benefit - as well as for the benefit of you,
too, all the jumbled scraps of information that used to go by. It
was so frustrating thinking "I know I've seen information about how to
identify that stamp somewhere, but what/where is/was it?!" and now the
increasing information on this site is already helping me personally value
and identify stamps. I hope you're finding it valuable, too.
I'm also instituting a new system in the stamp value sections whereby when
stamps sell for 10% or more above the Scott value, I am highlighting that
entry in bright garish red.
It gives a quick visual indication of what is selling for very high values
even if it is a bit hard on the eyes! Meantime the number of pages
is pushing past 90.... :)
29 May :
I've been worrying about the best way to navigate through the multiple
menus it takes in the stamp images/values section, and so this morning
redesigned this to vastly reduce the hassle and to put most of the various
pages a single click away from each other, using the "magic" of frames.
This - and some underlying changes to the page naming strategy - will
hopefully make this section now more open ended into the future.
Meantime, I've been busy spending my Memorial Weekend doing various things
- particularly adding some more images into the zemstvo area, although I'm
hesitant to put too much work into that before I receive the set of books
from Alex Artuchov on the subject. It looks like the total page
count has now grown to 85! All of a sudden, 100 pages looks very
achievable.
27 May
: I'm writing this page
- at least the history to this point - on Saturday 27 May 2000. For
the record, this morning saw the first major redesign of the main "home
page" - somewhere in the back of my mind is the belief that any one page
shouldn't have more than half a dozen to a dozen links hung off it, and I
was adding more and more links to the home page breaking this rule.
I decided the best solution was a "cheat" whereby I had a limited number
of main links plus some "sidebar" links as well. Adding the sidebar
enabled me to add some pages of "lower" interest such as this one,
although (to my surprise) I have noticed that the page most commonly
visited by each person is the page about me.
Now that I have created at
least an acceptable amount of content, my thoughts are increasingly
focusing on ways to better present the content. First priority was
to get content in any way at all, now increasingly the priority will
become to improve the presentation of the content to make for a more
user-friendly experience.
Yesterday saw a major
development, at least mentally from my perspective if not from the
perspective of you, the visitor. I added the off-site logo type
links to three different sites on the main home page - links to traffic
building sites that hopefully will bring more visitors in return for their
slightly obtrusive links. I laughed this morning to see that the
four unique visitors and 26 hits on the home page overnight was enough to
get my site rated as the 30th most popular stamp site by one of these two
sites - the other site hasn't updated its records to reflect the addition
of this site to their ratings/linkings engine yet.
Getting links from other
sites is a time consuming and frustrating business. Several of the
major stamp link sites were asked to link to my site seventeen days ago.
Notwithstanding their proud claims to have complete comprehensive sets of
links, and their requests for new links so they can keep their link lists
up to date and complete, none of them have responded to my polite request
and none of them have added a link yet. <sigh> The internet is no
longer a "Field of Dreams" environment. I remember nearly six years
ago when I first became active on the internet, and there were maybe a
thousand or so web sites in total, it was possible then to know all about
all the web sites, and a new web site had visitors just because of the
novelty of it. Now, being one more web site amongst tens of millions
is no longer of much interest to anyone, is it, and getting traffic to
one's site is in many ways the most difficult part of web publishing
today.
My earlier uncertainty
about what to put on the site has been replaced by lots of wonderful
ideas, all of which, alas, consume huge amounts of time. My favorite
project is probably the eBay result tracking, which could potentially
become a very valuable market valuation indicator for buyers and sellers
of stamps alike, but it is very time consuming. I seem only able to
add between five and ten extra sale results per hour of time - five if I
have to download or scan images, clean them up, resize them, etc, etc, and
ten if I'm just adding new sales to existing entries - which makes for
slow going and little apparent progress.
For the record, as of
yesterday, the web site comprised a total of 57 pages, and I've added two
more so far today! However, the period of rapid expansion is
probably over, and I doubt if we will exceed 100 pages by the end of the
year. I'd be pleased to exceed this, of course - lets see what
happens.
Future Plans
I have many more and
ambitious future plans for the site. Some of these things are half
done already, in the background awaiting release, others of them are major
long term projects that will take some time to put together.
Strangely enough, the
future of the site really depends on you - the visitors. If the site
proves popular, then there is no limit to how it can be developed, if the
site becomes a barren wasteland populated only by myself, well, then the
opposite applies!
So, please, visit and
revisit. Help if you can! Encourage if you can!
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