A few days ago we celebrated our 2nd anniversary here at eduStyle. The last two years have been an amazing ride. The idea for eduStyle started on the side of my bookshelf in my cubicle at Athabasca University. Me and my co-workers would print out higher-ed site we liked and tape them to the bookshelf try to inspire each other by looking at what others were doing right. Finally in late January of 2007 I announced the launch of the site on the uwebd mailing list to an amazing response.

Two years later things have grown a lot. Last year we launched the eduStyle awards and the community rose up submitting thousands of nominations and people’s choice votes. I left my day job and had to bring in my brothers, Cody and Andy, to help with the work of getting them off the ground. The community took ownership and they were an amazing success.

As the site has grown the time needed to run it has grown as well. We now have over 2000 registered users. We get approximately 15 new submissions to the gallery every day. We have tracked over 160 redesigns (with lots yet to post). We have hundreds subscribed to our monthly newsletter. The site gets over 10,000 visits each month (2x last year this time’s traffic).

In running the site we have tried to be sensitive to the community and not allow the site to become overly commercial. We make a little money from advertising (thank you DotCMS, Campus Tours, OmniUpdate, and OnlineCollege.org) but it doesn’t come close to covering the time requirement and the costs associated with running the site and doing the eduStyle awards.

We do all of this because we love the community and really want to help inspire campus web designers. So, we hope you don’t mind, but with this birthday celebration we ask that you consider giving eduStyle a little bit of a birthday present this year. Here are some ways you can show your support for what we are doing and help us continue to commit the time we’d like to to eduStyle.

5 ways to say happy birthday

1. If you are able consider either a one time donation or a continuing sponsorship of the site. We have $2, $5, and $10 dollar monthly donations or a one time gift in any amount.
2. Let any of our sponsors know how much you appreciate their support of the site.
3. Let your vendors know how much you value eduStyle and encourage them to help support the community by advertising on the site or sponsoring the awards.
4. Buy the eduStyle book when it comes out.
5. Wish us a happy birthday in the comments here, on your blog or in your twitter account (@edustyle).

Thank you for all the support you have given over the last two years and for your continued support. We really couldn’t do this all without the support of the community.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 8:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.