The new year rolled in with all the usual optimism, and with it, gleeful expectations that always greet new resolutions. With patience and perserverence, I believe 2004 possesses a real chance to attain greatness. I mean greatness where you can look another in the eye and let slip a nod, a raised eyebrow, and a half-formed grin created by nothing more than optimism. I mean greatness where the most mundane tasks become jaunty adventures. I mean the staggering sort of greatness where the goals need to be reset halfway through the year because you've already met them.

I do, perhaps, measure greatness differently than most folks. I measure it in terms of an ability to create something positive in our own corner of the universe. It takes many forms--from the minuscule to the colossal--and offers many outlets in your public, private, or professional life. And best of all, it's up to you how to achieve a little greatness. Make no mistake, it's not always easy, but I expect great things in 2004...and I do mean great.

Looking Back: 2003

So, what about 2003? Unlike tabloid psychics, I do keep track of hits and misses...and we certainly had both.

Freshen Up Web Design: Slight redesign for July 1, 2003 (MagWeb.com's birthday), especially on the free side to attract more folks into MagWeb.com. I showed a prototype of what I wanted to do and got the thumbs up, now it's time to do so on a larger scale.

Well, months rolled by and no new design. In December, I revamped the concept a tad and started the work on it. So far, so good, but it will start on the "free" side--make it look a bit jazzier and easier to navigate with better information.

Unnamed project Progess through the year, or at least I hope it will be so. Like MagWeb.com, it's a great idea, but needs considerable work to come out even in prototype. Well, we here at MagWeb.com are used to longer lead times--it took from 1996 to 2002 to get from 8 magazines to 100 (106). I hope it takes less time, far less time.

Progress continues, but not as quickly as I had hoped. Look for this is 2005.

Another Unnamed project The rework continues. The "boutique" approach may give way to "warehouse store" approach just to launch it. There's a lot of background work that needs done.

The unnamed project has a working name (M-Bombe), a working logo, a working prototype, and a working tag line: "First there was the A-Bomb, then the H-Bomb, and now, the M-Bombe." It is taking a bit longer than expected, but the debut is right around the proverbial corner. Pricing has been set, with the same "charter member" approach (the annual price remains the same no matter what future price increases bring) for those who sign on quickly, further discounts for our MagWeb.com members, and a "serial" approach that I hope to quicken as time goes by.

Naming Trivia: This project first went by the name of "MOB" (sounded a bit chaotic and undisciplined), followed by "TOMB" (a bit dead-sounding), and then BOMB, BOMBE, and finally M-BOMBE. As with naming anything new, you can get the "glass is half empty" folks saying "it'll bomb", or "embalm sounds as bad as tomb", or "it's mass destruction." The "half full" folks shout "bombs away", "it's da bomb" (er, a somewhat dated phrase meaning "good"), and "little package, much power." Only time will tell, and that's not saying the name can't change, but I will note that after years of promoting "MagWeb.com" to equal magazines on the web, one fellow asked if MagWeb was selling automobile accessories--i.e. Mag wheels.

25 issues per month: Here we go...300 issues for 2003. Plus, we want to do all the other "bonus" goodies that make MagWeb.com more than a magazine archive.

Here's one goal that was reached...300 magazine issues on the nose. The bonus goodies declined slightly, but that's a pretty good haul of articles! What you don't see is an increase in the number of back issues which must be laboriously hand-scanned, OCR'ed, edited, coded, and posted. A few members have complimented me on the increasing variety of postings. Another member got himself a scanner and OCR package and tried to scan one old magazine...man did he provide a burst of amazement and congratulations on our efforts.

Survive and Prosper: We increased our advertising in 2002 and are revamping and increasing it even more in 2003. We hope to draw more people to our website and induce more people to just try MagWeb.com. We'd be extremely pleased if all the folks who visited just tried the full archive for a week ($10 for 40,000 articles). Once inside, the sheer quantity and quality of the articles usually convince them to join for a longer time.

That worked to a certain extent. We saw the return of numerous previous members who let their membership lapse in 2001-2002 due to economic concerns. We're still the single best value on the web for military history and related topics. We did revise our ads for 2004 and increase the number of places they can be seen.

Painting, Modelling, etc. Still bound and determined...

Well...not exactly. Hope may spring eternal, but it sprung pretty quick into the new year.

Looking Ahead: 2004

Maintain 25 issues per month: That's still a tough goal to keep, but the process and scheduling experience that we built up over the years can be maintained. I'd like to redefine that halfway through the year to 26 issues a month, but that's a wait and see proposition considering the effort to detonate the M-Bombe.

Redo the Home Page and Associated "Free" Side Components: On its way, but I want to complete the transformation.

Detonate the M-Bombe: I believe it's got a lot of potential, and so do others. There's a question about the scheduling process, but I admit to being stubborn because I can look at the time-effort-maintainability formula and see patterns.

There's always the problem of too little, er, "content" initially, but we launched MagWeb.com with only a single issue from 8 magazines--maybe a couple hundred articles in total. And we posted only 6 issues a month in the beginning. Sure, it would have been nice to launch with 110 magazines and 40,000+ articles like we have now, with 25 issues a month, but you have to start somewhere, and this is all self-funded. It's a marathon, folks, not a sprint. I pick dependability over flashiness every time, and I pick deploying version 1.0 over waiting for version 8.0 every time, too.

More Magazines: I was hesitant in 2003 to really push for more magazines to join MagWeb.com because of the number of back issues we have to get to with our existing coalition magazine partners. I feel a little better about the progress, and will go back to pitching more magazines.

Survive and Prosper: This seems an annual resolution, but one worth repeating. It's an examiniation of costs, application of marketing efforts, and attention to a variety of details anyone who runs his own consumer-based business will know. For example, our credit card processing costs just increased by .11%, which we are absorbing. MagWeb.com rates remain unchanged in 2004.

Collectible Mug: We brought out our first one in late 2003 for sale at conventions or as a bonus for renewing or joining MagWeb.com at the conventions, and as a thank you for various good deeds. We intend to release a second collectible mug in 2004.

Promotional and Other Efforts: Not quite sure where this will go. We co-sponsored the War College lecture series at the 2003 national convention Origins. The venerable WC was about to be axed, and MagWeb.com was asked to help save it. We stepped up and ran a program on little time and even less money from the convention sponsors, and poured in our own resources for marketing it nationwide. Results were great if you were a WC attendee, but less than stellar from a MagWeb.com business proposition, but I was pleased to help the WC survive. We'll see what goes on in 2004. But we hope to be available a little bit more at various conventions and events around the country in 2004.

We've also been developing a number of other smaller projects that are closer to fruition than the previous two main ones (M-Bombe being one of these) we've mentioned from time to time. These are more on the fun side. We'll see how they go...

A Little CEO Travel: Instead of simply going to and from conventions and conferences and sitting in various venues, I intend to take time outside the hotel to visit local attractions, and maybe (gasp!) actually schedule visits to places I would like to see. And then, I want to do the write-ups. The last time I did that was back in Sept. 2002 when I finally went to Yorktown, Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, and other sites of interest over a four-day period after the Borodino conference. I missed that in 2003.

A Note About E-mailing MagWeb.com

With all the spam spinning into our hard drives, and believe you me, we get a lot (FYI: the record is 432 e-mails in one day!) I want to ask a favor. Please make sure that when you e-mail us with a question or comment, you make the subject line something military history-oriented or a specific magazine. Subject headings like: "Hi" and "A Question" get dumped into the trash can without being read. "A Question About Napoleonics" or "WWII MagWeb.com" will be read. I've been fooled into opening spam with generic headings too many times. I know I may have ditched some legitimate e-mail, but too many viruses and spam are making me a little pickier in what I open.

Obviously, if you're responding to one of our renewal e-mails, that subject line is A-OK. But if you're sending us questions and comments, please use something a little more specific to MagWeb.com.

Thank you.

To you...

And that's the resolutions for 2004 greatness. All of here at MagWeb.com wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. And again, thank you for all your patience, your word-of-mouth advertising, and support.

This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com