One of the many useful things in my new publishing system is the various article statistics. It tells me that this is my 600th article at this site. So today I am not offering anything substantive, but taking an opportunity to celebrate – and for  bit of shameless self-advertising.

I’m trying to weigh what today’s number means. Considering two and a half years of writing and editing since the launch of this site, it amounts to 240 posts every year. Or an average of four posts every week. Now, by today’s top “blogger” standards, four posts per week is a pitiful number, but given that everything we publish here needs qualified research of information and historical facts - it’s not too bad at all. Some of the posts were smaller, other larger, but in sum that’s six hundred times some piece of information was researched, written, illustrated and posted online.

I have received fantastic help from all our contributors; to all of them I am deeply grateful. Meeting the restorers, historians, modellers, wartime veterans or their families who kindly took their time to write, share their experiences and sometimes also supplied me with their articles and images has been a tremendous experience.

So how does today’s Spitfire Site conform to the vague idea of a site of two and a half years ago?  Here are a few things that I haven’t planned for but which make me proud today:

• 30,000 monthly visitors.
• 600 posts!
• My new publishing platform based on WordPress. Compared with my humble beginnings, today I’m running a fully-featured website via a fully-featured content management system.

There are also a few things that I planned to do but which didn’t materialize:

• An online book for complete operational history of the Spitfire. This is how the idea for the site started, but the book remains in draft, with the entire year 1944 still to be described.
• Description of all Spitfire variants. I know tha the site like this should probably have it but it can so easily be found elsewhere… anywhere…
• Photographic walkarounds. The 500+ photos of Spitfires inside and out still reside on my hard drive waiting for something to happen.

What will happen next? I would say that I have never suffered any shortage of ideas regarding further development of this site. The only limiting factor is the certain shortage of time to realize them… Anyway, here are some of the current thoughts for your consideration.

• 600 posts about one aircraft? How about expanding the site to cover a broader British aviation history site, with Hurricanes, Furies, Lightnings to join the Spitfire?
• How can we best celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, why not start post-blogging the events of 70 years ago?
• More resources for modellers – how about a set of scale  drawings, for example ?
• Other ideas?  Feel free to make your suggestion.

Here’s to the next 600 posts. Please continue to support the Spitfire Site with your emails and contributions.

[Chris Shiflett, via Flickr/Creative Commons]