Join us as we look back over 5 months of animal crossing online experience for those who care about the game as much as their nearest and dearest. Entering a big market just over 5 months from now was a big step for a small little website that had just opened, but one that would change the whole market of animal crossing fan club sites. Through the bad peak times and the good peak times this small site has struggled through and on the way growing to one of the leading sites in the animal crossing fan club genre. As we take you through the secrets, good times and big developments of this site.

There is more than it seems behind the idea of this small animal crossing fan club. Believe it or not the idea of this site was originally an updated version of the small rundown site, Animal Crossing Fan Club Site. This was the original name of animal crossing fans online as we know it. As the new site started to grow, it started to grow its own brand Animal Crossing Fans Online as it is today. This new site had few features but was growing. A crucial part of the new sites development was it joining AC Top Sites. But starting here wasn’t an easy job. It was the middle of August and anyone who know about ac top sites will know the system works monthly and your votes are only renewed at the start of a new month. So we were starting in around 30^th place.

It was the end of august and the site was starting to grow, we had struggled our way on to the top 10 and were competing with long runners such as The Bell Tree Forums and of course Everything Animal Crossing a site in our same position, a new comer to the market. We had developed affiliate partners and were receiving links through that system. Our site was actually starting to grow now running in 3^rd place we were one of the front runners. We were also accepting members with a members area. This was a non-successful feature and closed at the end of October.

It’s the begging of September 2009 and we are growing massively with nearly 1,000 unique visitors. It was time to go up market and show we mean business. This was to mean one of the most major developments in Animal Crossing Fans Online’s time. Our own domain was the next step of this adventurous journey. http://www.animalcrossingfansonline.co.uk/ was born. Replacing our previous free domain, http://animalcrossingfansonline.weebly.com/. Later that month another massive development was to happen to change Animal Crossing Fans Online and the way we use it. As a non-donation accepting site we were forced to place ads on the site. But the site was not bombarded with popups or spam ads. Just ads about the animal crossing genre and just small block ads.

It’s the end of October that same year and the members area is becoming unsuccessful and we are forced to close it. This would be replaced by ACFO Forums our official forums with its very own member’s area. For site and game discussion this was sure to be a successful feature that would bring ACFO to the animal crossing discussion forum market. But no one was to know this was not a good Idea and could not survive. There was too much competition and it was pulling the attraction away from the main site as it being hosted on a different sever with a different address. It was decided the external forums were to be closed for good on the 10^th December 2009 and would be replaced with small embedded nabble forums.

Christmas had come and it was our first so we were celebrating big time with competitions, decorations and parties. Over the Christmas and new year holdiday the site came to holt with visitors away for Christmas and so was the owner. After Christmas the site was picked back up and it carried on. In January 2010 we joined JoJay Network a network of small sites and a service offering free blogs. Our owner was a co-owner of JoJay too. We moved our blog too JoJay away from the main site. Our small site was now growing into a massive site.

Its February 2010 and our site is set to make history by moving from Weebly to 000webhost on a Wordpress platform. All our same pages and many features are still available and many more on their way. We made the move to increase page load times an give you a better experience on the site. Animal Crossing Fans Online is still the same domain.  This will be a significant land mark in the history of Animal Crossing Fans Online.

That’s Animal Crossing Fans Online, we’ve took you through the good times and the bad times and hope there will be many more good times too come. Join us in September when we celebrate Animal Crossing Fans Online’s 1^st Birthday and takwe you through a whole year of Animal Crossing Fans Online. Hope to see you then! Joshua Moorcroft-Jones

Animal Crossing Fans Online 16/02/2010