Site news: Changes coming to Orlando Informer as we prepare for Diagon Alley

A letter from Dan Hatfield, Owner & Editor of OrlandoInformer.com:

Greetings, my friends. As you likely know, we’ve had incredible growth since the start of our site almost three years ago…

• 600,000 pageviews in 2011
• 1.9 million pageviews in 2012 (up 216%)
• 5.5 million pageviews in 2013 (up 189%)

And, as we announced last week, January’s pageviews rose another 202% over January 2013! All in all, our fans and readers have helped us become the world’s largest and most popular resource for Universal Orlando vacation planning.

To help guide us to this point, I have dedicated 60 to 80 hours each and every week for three years (except for a one week vacation during Christmas 2011). What’s more, aside from less than a dozen exceptions, I have updated our site literally every day for these three years.

As essentially a one-man operation, building Orlando Informer has been a passion that your readership has allowed me to pursue, and for that I am incredibly grateful. At the same time, I’ve reached a point in this process where I need to find a better balance between my professional pursuits, my family, and my health. In addition, I know I need to free up some work time as well, because the opening of Diagon Alley by itself will demand 50 to 100 hours of my time as I research and document the new area, create and edit all-new vacation planning articles, update our free touring plans, etc.

So changes are afoot. The good news for you, the reader, is that most of the changes I’m making will be transparent to you – and these steps will ensure that we can continue to be the world’s leading resource for Universal Orlando vacation planning as the resort continues to develop its incredible entertainment offerings. As part of this, I’m very happy to announce that Marc N. Kleinhenz, best known as the author of our Rumor Round-Up and Countdown to Diagon Alley posts, will be expanding his contributions to our site and assisting with editing our blog. I’m very excited to have a chance to work more closely with Marc, and I know his expertise will help our posts shine even brighter.

The bad news is that there are a few changes you will notice. Most notably, we have discontinued our Weekly Dispatch blog post and the accompanying weekly email. Furthermore, even though I pride myself on having posted 50 or more “daily updates” on our site every month for over two years, I simply need to throttle back on this number. Don’t worry – I’ll continue to provide our readers with obsessively updated information about Universal Orlando, I’m just going to try to take a little more time for my family on the weekends. (Although, we are going to the first night of Mardi Gras this weekend!)

The bottom line is, going forward you may notice not quite as many new updates and blog posts each week. This should not be interpreted as us stepping back from our pledge to be your best (and favorite) Universal Orlando vacation planning site. In reality, the long-term prospects for these changes will make our site even stronger, as I will have more time to dedicate to larger projects, like finally getting our forum up and running, launching our mobile apps, etc.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and, as always, thank you for your support! If you have any questions, you are welcome to leave a comment below. Otherwise, for private matters, you may certainly drop me a line via our Contact page.

Sincerely,

Dan Hatfield

PS. If you happen to be new to our site, you can learn all about what we do on our About page.