For those that have been keeping an eye on Web Design Weekly, you probably have noticed that things have been extremely quite… ?

The first half of the year was quite productive. Lots of new articles, a range of site modification and great newsletter growth. It was shaping up to be a great year until August arrived. During the first half of the year my full-time job was pretty quiet so I had the motivation and energy to tinker and work on WDW in the evenings. That all changed pretty quick when we landed an awesome project at work and I was knee-deep in some pretty interesting development.

From the beginning of my web development career around 9 years ago I have always been fascinated by the fact that with a laptop anywhere in the world we can create and sell products online.

During my early development years the thought of creating products drove my passion to learn, read and experiment.

So after many months of procrastinating, designing and developing I’m happy to launch the beginning of Little Island.

For those who are keen to know a little history. WDW’s first issue was sent out on the 1st of July 2011 with about 15 subscribers. That’s over 4 years ago! Today, the subscriber count is around 23,400 and growing on an average of 150 a week. Each week contains about 20 links, so that’s about 4,000 awesome links that have been sent out worldwide.

To think that over 23,000 people let me email them once a week is truly astounding. This is something that I cherish and gives me the incentive to continue to make sure each and every issue of WDW is top notch.

A last-minute scheduling change has opened up this week’s WDW newsletter sponsorship. If you have a product or service that you’d like to promote, please do get in touch.

For all you folks based in Sydney you should totally come to this free event that General Assembly and WDW are putting on.

Keeping up with the tradition and reading a large amount of “year in review” posts over the last few days has given me some inspiration to hopefully inspire others to do the same, or just give you a little more insight into how Web Design Weekly is going and a small glimpse into where things are headed.

Sitting in a little co-working space and pushing “send” on the first Web Design Weekly was a long time ago. 2 years, 1 month and 1 day to be exact. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Lots of late Thursday nights frantically compiling. Crazy amounts or scanning feeds, tweets and emails. Lots of early Friday mornings proof-reading. All usually after crazy hectic days at work. Quite often I have even put off heading to the climbing gym or skipping on a run so I can get the newsletter out. I don’t really like this part. It’s self induced, but I care about WDW. It’s kinda crazy how little side projects can do that to you.

Just a little survey to help me make the weekly newsletter better.If you could take the time to answer the 4 questions that would be greatly appreciated.

Today I am happy to announce that there are two ways (both completely optional) that you can support Web Design Weekly. You can become a subscribing member and automatically donate a monthly amount of your choosing, or you can make a one off donation.

When I first stated the Web Design Weekly newsletter, I was very anti-advertising. I have touched on that before. But as time has gone by, I have come to the conclusion that if the newsletter is going to continue, I have to explore ways to support the running costs and fund my time. I hope you can understand.

Late last week, I decided to start work on a new advertising feature – Promoted links.

It’s already nearing the second week of the New Year and it’s already feeling like just another week. The best thing about the start of the year though is that the attention to goals is at the forefront of everybody’s minds. I have many personal goals that I would like to achieve this year, but nowhere near as many as I have for Web Design Weekly (WDW). Hopefully I am not biting off more than I can chew!

From what started off as a tiny side project whilst hanging out in a co-working space seems to have slowly taken over every spare minute of my time. I couldn’t be happier.

Well this is just a bit of a housekeeping post. I don’t like housekeeping.

As you can probably tell by the title, things are changing. I’m not sure if it’s for the best but I am open to suggestions so please comment below if you have any ideas.

When I started WDW I had no idea that it would get any traction. Boy was I wrong! I didn’t have any plans at all and just focused on delivering a rad email to your inbox every week. Hopefully I am fulfilling this…