Aw, Crap! It’s been
Four Years Already??

NoisyDvL5

As seems to be the norm lately (and probably for the last few thousand years), time has just flown by! I can’t believe it’s July already. I also can’t believe ItsAllTrue.net is four years old!

I’ve wanted to give IAT a makeover for a few months now and the 4th Anniversary seemed like a great time. Of course, the thought to revamp the site only really hit me a week ago and made for a hectic week of color swatches, furious coding, and cursing the makers of the various browsers for their inability to make things universal!

I’ll still be working out the kinks on the live site (no matter what, the live site never seems to work as well as the version I had in the sandbox), so please bear with me this week as we sort all the little bits of charm our new design will have brought about.

But, that’s all technical stuff! IAT is four! Woah? Seems like just yesterday that I was taking horrible, fuzzy photographs of the early MOTU & DC figures for those first reviews. I think we’ve come a long way over the years, but we want to go further.

Some changes to my world have left IAT adrift a bit this year as we’re on pace for our first “down” year since we started. We’re not off by much, so Vault & I are aiming for a strong second half to keep our growth streak alive for one more year.

To do so, we’re going to make a few changes going forward. Neither Vault nor I have been able to keep up the pace of daily reviews this year. Partially, due to just being too busy, but also because it was something we never really set out to do. When we planned things out four years ago, the idea was to have all these fun features – Amusing Articulations, Friday Five, Costume Consensus, Most Requested, Mr. Rant, I could go on. Now, some of those just didn’t get over all that well, but we want to come up with some ideas to make them more popular or even some new ideas altogether. One thing that I really want to get in for this year is my “ReCollect!” blog. Partially because I think it’ll be fun, but all because I still need motivation to setup my toy collection in my new house.

The other thing we’ll be doing is bringing back the News. It’s been nearly a year since we featured News regularly and that is probably the biggest culprit in our growth rate being off this year. We don’t have the manpower to keep as updated as some of the big boys out there, but we will do a better job of bringing the news for the lines we collect (MOTU, DC, NECA, Transformers Masterpiece, Third Party & Seventh Market Toys, etc) back to IAT and keep the conversation going for the toys we love.

Since Reviews are much more complicated than News, we’ve installed the new Slider at the top of the page to keep the most recent reviews visible instead of being pushed down by the news (we’re just not big scrollers). We’ve also started a new system of color coding the posts – so far with Reviews, News, & Sponsor Updates – so that readers can make their way through the site at a glance.

I think that covers the changes. Mainly just pardon my mess this week as I tune up the revamp and comb through the checklists now that I have some free time (& SDCC is coming to make them instantly outdated!). So, let’s say one final goodbye to those octagons. I know there’s a still a few over there to the right, but they’re on my list awaiting some inspiration.

We’re going into year five and it’s time to pump some more life back into the site. I’ve talked about what I have planned coming up, but what do you guys want to see? I know you love Batman, but a site couldn’t exist on Batman reviews alone (well, it totally could… probably every day for years, but that’s beside the point!). Let me know if you’ve got any great ideas for content you’d like to see her at IAT as put together what will hopefully be a banner fifth year!

NoisyDvL5

25 thoughts on “Aw, Crap! It’s been
Four Years Already??”

  1. Man, it seems like yesterday that I was wishing you guys a Happy Third Anniversary… so Happy Fourth!

    As for the other stuff, sounds like a plan. I’ve noticed several toy sites experiencing downtime along with IAT. It’s understandable. I used to post in various forums and as of late I have neglected the poor folks who run those. But the last year has been extremely hectic and this has heavily affected my online life. I think the only places I still post on a regular basis are here and over at Joe A Day.

    Looking forward to the new look. Just keep the collector guides around ’cause they’re an invaluable resource tool. All my best wishes to this site’s future!

  2. looks fargin awesome… you guys keep writing it, i’ll keep reading it. 🙂

  7. Congrats on four years! the new layout looks pretty cool. Just keep the rockin’ reviews coming and ther’ll be no problem getting four more years and beyond!

  8. Congrats on 4 years! This is still one of my favorite figure collector sites. I check it almost daily. There are always great conversations, topics and reviews to check in on. Now if you can only get the checklists up to date, hint hint, that would be fantastic. Can’t wait to see what you plan for the next year.

  9. Congratulations on the four great years (I think Ive been around for three) and heres to many more! Those updates and changes sound great!

  11. I discovered the site about 2 years ago thanks to a Lego Minifigure review set. I’ve been coming on every day since then. Keep up the great work. I am truly entertained and informed by everything you post.

    One thing for me, I miss the search option for the reviews. I go to past reviews all the time, and while it’s not tough to just Ctrl+F and find the name of something I need, the search was pretty awesome.

  12. Congrats on the anniversary!
    with everyone trying to carve their own space out on the internets, this is one of my usual hits. Right after email, Facebook, pr0n, IMDb, TPB, pron, DW, and various other sites.

    of course, now I’m going to have to go dig up that GB review so I can read the joke again.
    (and it’s Danny’s b-day/Canada Day.)

  13. Wow, happy 4th birthday/anniversary guys! Thanks for all the hard work you guys do on daily basis, and yet you make it look so damn easy.
    Here’s to more than 4 more guys:)

  14. Congrats on 4 years! This is one of my favourite sites to check on a daily basis. Really enjoy both Noisy & Vault’s fun, laid-back, common-sense reviewing styles. Keep the good times coming.

  21. Congrats! I
    Can we get a return of the matty question and answer roundups?

  23. It’s only been four years? It feels like a lot longer and I mean that in a good way! Congrats!

  25. Happy 4 years!

    OK, understand, I’m not against change, just that when something has to change is has to improve. Change for the sake of change just annoys me.

    I think there’s a couple of things off now. For one thing, the ‘leave a reply’ field doesn’t keep my data anymore. It used to be ‘sticky’ and all I had to do was type and hit send. This has actually been an issue for a couple of months now, so it must be a coding thing.

    Second, text is now a light gray. It tends to bleed into any background color, like the reply box. It’s hard to read, man! I’ve got old eyes! Even against the white background it’s uncomfortable!

    And I miss many of those discontinued concepts like Mr. Rant.

    But, in saying that, I do understand. IAT is not a paying job. Content generation has to be something you (and Vault and others) ENJOY doing and if you don’t feel it, if something had become tiresome or a grind or you just feel meh about it, then IAT stops being fun and it becomes a non-paying time-sucking job. And we’re not even touching on the reality of you having like a real life with a real job and family obligations and so on.

    So, I’ll hang around as long as you’re doing this, but for the love of pete change the text from gray, huh?

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