Topic: Another year has gone by for OttMoto

[npereira]

Well,

This is my little post that I do every year at around this time. 2008 was a good year, although not for the weather. It was rainy and not so hot. Hopefully summer 09 will be better.

The OttMoto site has done good so far, a lot of traffic, a lot of newcomers and especially a lot of spam!  My god! 2008 has been the worst year for spammers. Every day I see myself deleting at least 2 new registrations and see my Moderators banning several spammer accounts (Thanks to the people that use the “report to moderator” option in the posts). So since the New Year, I have setup the site to alert me when someone new registers. I then look at the IP address and Hostname that the server picked up and see if I need to delete the account or not. I might go as far as enabling the Admin Approval on all new registrations, but I'm not there yet. My Moderators (GixxerSteph, NotKitten, and Skittles) have done a great job in 2008 cracking down on spammers and banning people when they go overboard, and I would like to extend my gratitude to theses people. Remember that theses people are not paid in anyway shape or form to be on the site day in and day out, and 2008 sough 400+ new memberships, which most still come to the site still. Again, thanks to my Mods! Keep up the good work.

So, this to say that it's the time of the year again. I have changed the front page and side bar to show the 2009 site supporters. So if you see yourself coming to the site often and enjoy it, you have managed to sell parts and/or your bike to upgrade to a better one, please be generous and donate using the Donation button on the front page. It doesn’t take much to help out. So far this year, we only have 1 Advertiser. Wheelsport decided to cut down on their advertisement budget due to harder times and the economy, but we might possibly see a second one in the weeks to come. But what helps more then advertisement, is YOU. Your 10$ helps ALOT! And I want to personally thank the people that do help the site, even if it's only 1 time 10$ donation. Your the reason this site is still alive and doing well. A lot of Forums come and go in the Motorcycle industry and here in Ottawa. I'm glade to say that Ott-Motorcycles.ca is going on it's 5 year come August 09, and to my knowledge, there isn’t another site in Ottawa that has lasted this long. A terrific achievement to a site that directly targets the Ottawa area and its riders. Yes there are bigger better sites, like the gixxer.com, sportbikes.ca forum amongst others, but those sites don't target a limited audience like a region, so they are better suited to pull in Advertisers across multiple states/provinces unlike OttMoto. We have a very limited opportunity as far as Advertiser. The 6 or 7 dealers in town, and the 3-4 private shops. The private shops like Hybrid Racing (Thanks Jon), Mario @ MD Motorcycles, Rick @ Moto X-Pert, theses are the shops that benefit in advertising and those are the people I would like to see advertise on OttMoto, but apart from our friendly and supportive Jon@Hybrid and Wheelsport of Orleans, none have shown interest, which is really sad. I provided the means to bring this world (OttMoto that is) to life, it's because of it's members that we are still here after 5 years!

From the bottom of my heart, to all my Supporters, thank you for your ongoing support.

Hope to see you all again in 2009...