ScoobySnax.com Three-Year Anniversary: Year in Review

Wow, it's hard to believe it's already been three years that the site has been up! 

​Since last September, the site stats have nearly doubled! Looking at the site stats, on average, the site gets about 800 views per day with an average of a little over 4,000 views per week. Though I don't really have anything to compare the site's views to, some sites probably get thousands, even tens of thousands of views per day from people all around the world. While ScoobySnax.com certainly doesn't have that sort of traffic, I still continue to be proud of the site, and of course, the site visitors every day. It's amazing to me that nearly 1,000 different people view the site every day and I want to say thank you to everyone who's ever read, commented or even briefly viewed the site.

​For those of you who are new to the site or haven't read last year's year-in-review post, generally I try to sum up the highlights of the site from the past year, and there certainly were a lot of highlights this year!

Ironically, only a few weeks after the last site year-in-review was posted, the site unfortunately was down for nearly a month due to some coding glitches which I couldn't figure out how to fix. However, the site being down gave me time to finish up the episode guide, which now has in-depth info on every single Scooby-Doo episode in the franchise. It was a monumental project, as I wrote every single bit of information by hand and took screenshots of every single villain in the Scooby universe myself. But it feels great having that finally available for people to use for reference and information, admittedly I even occasionally refer to the guide if I need to know an airdate lol.

As the History of the Site page now says, "2017 was the year for ScoobySnax.com." And that it was, on January 23, 2017, I put the finishing touches on the Internet Games page and posted it a few days later. The page features a list of the best and most popular Scooby-Doo games, and where to play them, so if you're ever bored sometime, definitely check those games out! They are fun for both kid and adult fans alike, and hey, I've even caught myself playing them on occasion! I also created a subpage in May on Crystal Cove Online, a game which was a companion to the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated series. In my opinion, that is the best Scooby-Doo game ever made. It's both challenging and fun, and really does a good job mirroring the episodes! Though I've been told Night of 100 Frights is also one of the best Scooby games (as it has several references to the classic series, including iconic villains such as the Black Knight and the Ghost of Redbeard) so I'll definitely have to play that one sometime and compare them! It was actually a bit of a blast from the past to create the Crystal Cove Online page, since I replayed the entire Crystal Cove Online game to get my information for that page!

​And of course, next was amusingly the character guide. Why is that amusing you ask? Because I've been saying ever since I did the "What's coming this month on ScoobySnax?" posts for a brief time way back in March 2015 that I would finish the character guide, and in February, the character guide was finally posted nearly two years later than I had intended. Hey, I guess better late than never, right? Lol

​Lastly, there was the List of Releases guide. This list, which took a surprisingly short amount of time compared to what I was expecting, compiles every season set, compilation set, volume and movie ever released on DVD, Blu-Ray and VHS and gives a brief bit of info on them. In my opinion, the How to Have a Complete Scooby Collection is far more helpful in finding missing episodes which you may want, though if you prefer the home media releases being organized by DVD rather than by episode, this is definitely a good way to figure out which DVD you want to purchase if you have a limited amount of money and/or only want DVDs with a lot of episodes on them (as unfortunately WB doesn't always do a great job of making the amount of episodes they put on a DVD/Blu-Ray worth your money).

​Combined, these updates are a big landmark for the site! After the List of Releases and Crystal Cove Online pages were created, I had finally added everything I had originally envisioned adding when the site was first published. "Are you still going to update on Scooby-Doo news?" was one particularly memorable comment I got right after posting something to the affect of the previous sentence. Admittedly, I probably worded that poorly and looking back, I can easily see how someone would interpret what I wrote as I'm somehow finished up with updating the site completely. Of course as I think up new page ideas and new Scooby content comes out, I will definitely create more pages on the site!

What would a year-in-review post be without talking about the fun facts? Starting on October 13, 2014, on a whim, I decided to start a weekly blog series called "Fun Fact of the Week," where each Monday, I present a new little-known or interesting fact about Scooby. I honestly wasn't sure if it was going to be a week, a month, a year, or forever, but as soon as I began writing them, I quickly knew it was going to be forever. Though originally the posts were more casually published on random days, on January 5, 2015, the posts were made every single Monday, and still continue to be nearly 3 years later today. Why Mondays, you ask? Honestly, no particular reason other than people tend to hate Mondays and I wanted to give people something to look forward (heck, I even look forward to writing them every Monday!) As of currently, 151 weeks of fun facts have been posted on the site with several guest writers, including the 100th fun fact written by Be Cool Scooby-Doo head writer Jon Colton Barry, and the 150th fun fact, written by the creator of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and writer of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Tom Ruegger.

And I suppose that leads me to my next point. One of my favorite parts of the site is definitely getting to interact with everyone, those who have worked on the show and fans alike. It was a blast working with Jon Colton Barry and Tom Ruegger, so I want to thank them again for taking time out of their very busy schedule to write the fun facts! Besides writers and show crew members, I equally love getting to talk to fellow Scooby fans, whether its interviews or just in the comments. Speaking of which, one of my favorite articles of the year to write was the Scooby college entrance essay one - it was super fun chatting with Tore and getting to meet her! I want to thank her once again for her time, and wish her the best in getting her master's degree!

One of my other favorite projects this year was working with Dallas Kinard on the Scooby continuity timeline. I was glad to help out with such an ambitious project, and it's been great seeing how many people the timeline has already helped! Lastly, although this didn't happen, if anyone remembers the Scooby-Doo typecast which I did with TS-D/JA Productions, we were talking about doing another one at some point, though it didn't end up happening this year, since Scooby-Doom has temporarily abandoned the site to work with a friend on his new podcast, Nerd Blitz. The podcast is a hodgepodge of various pop culture topics, but there is quite a bit of Scooby-related content, so be sure to listen to it if you enjoy Scooby and listening to podcasts! A big thank you as well to Scooby-Doom and I wish him the best of luck in his podcast and whatever future projects he decides to pursue!

Though this isn't related to the site, I'd like to mention my fanfic as well. It's been a blast writing it this year and developing new characters and story arcs for it. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I'm currently writing an ongoing fanfiction story entitled "Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake" about what would happen if Daphne didn't get back together with the gang after Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and continued with her show. If you haven't read it yet, be sure to check it out!

Before I move on, I'd also like to talk about the site's Twitter account quickly. It's been amazing to see the followers slowly climb for the site, and now the site has over 500 people following it, including several people who currently work or have worked on Scooby! My second alternate (non-site) account also now has nearly 100 followers. I truly enjoy talking with everyone every time I come on Twitter, and it's truly a pleasure getting to chat with old and new fans alike. I appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for the great conversations!

I could go on for a while, but before this becomes a 50-page long post, let's get to my hopes for the site in the upcoming year!

1. Of course, I'd like to continue creating more content for the site, including new pages and articles. Since I promised to make more articles early on this year, I admittedly haven't been very good about following through with that. In the upcoming year, I'd like to write more, interesting articles for all of you to read! In addition, I'd like people to continue being helped by the site - it's great seeing all of the emails from people that the site has helped them in some way!

2. I hope that ScoobySnax continues to be a comfortable, enjoyable environment for Scooby fans to use for reference, get updated on the latest Scooby news, or even just chat with one another. As I've mentioned before, I think the Scooby community is fantastic in that sense...almost everyone in the fandom tries to make people feel welcome and part of the community, which you don't necessarily see in a lot of fandoms. I feel like, in some fandoms, there's a perception that being a site owner makes you "above" everyone. I sometimes get the vibe that people may think of me that way, particularly as an admin on the ScoobyAddicts forum. In reality, I don't think of myself as "above" anyone, I honestly just feel like another fan who wants to chat and have fun discussions with people who I see as my equals, not people who I'm above or below. Like I brought up last year, I feel like we as Scooby fans can all benefit from talking and discussing things with each other! It's truly a pleasure for me to be a part of this wonderful fandom.

Thank you all once again for a fantastic three years, and I hope you have enjoyed visiting the site and reading the blog (hopefully I've entertained you at least somewhat!) :) . And of course, thank you for reading this very long post, and hopefully you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it! Here's to another fantastic year of ScoobySnax.com!