Some of our readers might have wondered what happened to us this last week. You might have typed in our URL, or clicked on a link, and thought, ‘WTF does account suspended mean?’ Essentially, the company that hosted our website only allows a certain amount of bandwidth, which we exceeded by far, and our account was temporarily suspended as a result. We had a few options to pursue at that point: 1) give up on theweedblog (no f’ing way); 2) pay out the nose to rent a server from the webhost; 3) procure our own server and do everything in house. TWB decided to go with option three because we did not want to run into this problem again, and plan on being around a long, long time. Now that we have our own server, the only thing that can take us off the net is a natural disaster, and even then, we have backup power. We will be taking the site down once in awhile for maintenance, but other than that, we should be operating unimpeded for as long as me and Ninjasmoker are alive.
Almost every quality blog that I follow issues a ‘State of the Blog’ post about once a or twice a year, and considering the last week we had at TWB, I think now is as good a time as any to write about the ‘State of TheWeedBlog.’ As of the writing of this post, our traffic rank according to Alexa.com is 408,285 overall, and 80,887 in the United States. When we were taken offline on May 19th, we had already received over 100,000 pageviews for that month, and over a quarter of a million pageviews overall. When you count search engine crawls and spiders into the equation, the numbers can get pretty staggering. Especially considering the fact that we have only been in existence for about 4 months!
When Ninjasmoker and I started this website, we had no idea what to expect. I had recently decided to step away from law school, and was looking for a way to keep my research skills sharp. I would often ramble to Ninjasmoker about marijuana policy and activism, and he would tell me that I needed to start a blog because my tips could help a lot of people. After a few weeks of toking, and some research and development by Ninjasmoker, we launched TheWeedBlog.Com in January 2010. Our main intent at the time was to help educate/entertain marijuana consumers on anything and everything that relates to marijuana; state laws, court cases, how to’s, funny stuff to view, news, etc. However, as the blog evolved, it started to grow exponentially, and we are fighting to keep up with the demand! We now get story ideas e-mailed to us on a daily basis (on just about any topic), are active in almost every marijuana related campaign in the nation, our stories are picked up by Google News and other internet news outlets, and we have a lot more things planned in the upcoming months.
One thing that readers will surely notice is that we have picked up a new staff member. ‘No Inhale’ is his name, and he brings a unique perspective to TWB. I like to pride myself on being a politically active, medical marijuana consumer, while Ninjasmoker represents the ‘traditional’ recreational marijuana consumer. ‘No inhale’ does not consume marijuana, and being that he is currently in college, that makes him a very rare student! However, just because he does not consume marijuana does not mean that he doesn’t support the cause. That’s why I think his perspective is worth bringing to TWB; he believes in the medical properties of marijuana, and thinks that marijuana policy reform is way overdue, even though he doesn’t consume the plant himself…Don’t you wish there were more non-tokers like him!? No Inhale will be taking over ‘Stoner Friendly Links’ and will be helping out with news coverage from now on.
So what does the future hold for TheWeedBlog? Only time will tell. Had someone told me back in January that TWB would be as far along as it is now, in just four months, I would have never believed them. However, now ANYTHING seems possible. We are currently building a state-by-state activism page which should help the political movement. TWB is planning on attending events this summer up and down the West Coast in order to network with other marijuana consumers/activists. We are also launching an online store in the upcoming months, which will sell just about anything a marijuana consumer would like. Marijuana media is one of the fastest growing industries in America, and TWB is honored to be one of the outlets at the forefront. If you are interested in doing business with TWB, have story ideas, want to see a new feature added, or ANYTHING else, don’t hesitate to send us an e-mail!
