BlueChampions blog enters the 3rd year!

In the hustle and bustle of the transfer deadline day, what I forgot was that the very day, Sep 1, BlueChampions blog completed its two years of existence. Yup, it all started on 1 Sep, 2006. I don’t want give you this cliched “i never thought i’d make this far”. I strongly felt that I would keep blogging for many many years to come. But I’m going to give you this other cliche “you made it possible”. That’s true. If no one’s reading this blog, I’d rather type the articles in a notepad and save them as text files.

When I started this blog, I knew it would be successful. Because there were not too many Chelsea blogs around. Back then, we were the most hated lot. I don’t if it was because of it, there was not too much representation on the internet for Chelsea. Our own club website sucked. The club had a certain personality of its own, thanks to Roman’s determination, Jose’s lovable arrogance and our players’ winning spirit and resolve. And that personality deserved to be publicised and celebrated in the blogosphere too. That’s why and how this blog started.

This was my first post in this blog:

I speak Chelsea!
Okay, this is a Chelsea fan blog! The posts would mostly be the views, opinions and factual statements of a Chelsea fan. Whether you agree or disagree, you’re free to post your comments.

Such a plain and simple start eh? It was meant to be a test post, that’s why. Earlier I had a dummy blog where I had written about a dozen posts. Then I bought a domain which is this bluechampions.com and transferred all those posts on Sep 1, 2006 which hence became officially the opening day of this blog. Some people wonder how I was able to get this domain name – bluechampions.com so easily! You’d also be surprised to know that I didn’t have any alternatives, I just went for bluechampions.com and got it!

I can’t believe that I’ve published about 600 articles since then. I don’t think you’d believe that you’ve posted about 20,000 comments so far. Believe me when I say I read every single comment, yeah, every single one of them. Sometimes when I’m busy I read them later but always read them, at some point of time. I may be too busy or lazy to respond, but trust me I read every single word you type.

The hallmark of this blog has been the comment section that burns with fiery discussions. I’d say we have one of the few most commented Chelsea blogs. The archives are still there. You can still read the most heated and interesting discussions that have happened here at various stages. When I visit the archives, I could how this blog has evolved over a period of time, alongwith Chelsea FC. We have all made a miniscule contribution to the Blue Revolution and we should be proud about it.

There have been hundreds and thousands of people who have read or participated in this blog. My stats show that there are about 10000 unique visitors every month and a great percentage of them continue to visit. Most of them add the blog feed and read the articles without even opening the blog. That’s why they don’t show up on the stats of views and comments. And you guys now have identities in this blog. We all know you, your nickname, your stance, who you like and who you hate etc. So you have a personality here. The gravatar came in only to enhance that personality and add one more dimension to the identities.

And the key to the sustenance of this blog has been the returning loyalists (read ‘you’) and their free marketing. I’m sure some of you have gone back and referred or recommended this bog for your fellow blues. And if you haven’t, that’s very next thing you’re doing today. In this third year of this blog, I’m planning to go public, as in, publicising the blog and make much more popular than it is now. I’m sure you’d help me too.

All through these two years, the blog has also undergone dozens of changes in terms of themes, widgets and other features. I’m sure I’ve pissed off a lot of you with my annoying habit of tinkering around. But believe me, most of the times, I had a valid reason and that’s the desire to make this a better blog. We need a good blog, don’t we? We are the Chelsea and being Chelsea we deserve a good place to discuss the most happening things with Chelsea and football. Only in order make this blog more current I’ve also increased the frequency of posting articles from 2-3 a week to about 4-5 a week now.

I tried my stint with advertisements on this blog. I put up a few earned some money too. To be very frank, I never liked to see ads on this blog. I don’t want anything that ruins the look and feel or the or the visitor experience on this blog. That’s why I removed all of them. I keep getting enquiries for advertisements but I simply reject them nowadays. I’ve decided that I’d consider only those ads that give you some kind of benefit. I don’t want any benefit out of this blog except the fun that I get in posting articles, reading your comments and sometimes joining with you in the comments section. But I always wanted to bring in new, exciting features – the gravatars, the opinion polls (with multiple choices now), the footie news feed, the BC Shout and more importantly some little tweaks here and there.

So now, in the ever-changing environment in BlueChampions, I proudly introduce a brand new feature that you’re going to love. We’re adding another B to the BC that we know. No, I’m not selling the blog to BBC or something. Now in BlueChampions, you will have BBC Radio 5 live. Yeah you read it right. It is indeed BBC. Now you’ll be able to listen to all those BBC audio files and watch all those BBC videos too. All right here in this blog, you don’t have to visit the BBC website. You can start playing the audio or even video file and return to your business of reading and commenting in BlueChampions. The audio quality is simply brilliant. The link is also in the top menu bar, adjacent to the BC Shout link. Please use it and let me know what you think about it.

Not just that. You can let me know your any other views about the blog, the positives, the negatives and also the areas of improvement. I won’t be able to satisfy all, but I’ll surely take your point, and all other things being equal, I’d also try to implement them.

Thank you all! Keep the blue flag flying high!