Endless Lagoon's.
An abundance of big name photo galleries would appear at the turn of the Millenium. In their own right they scratched a groove in the road of mediochrity, for they became nothing more than a vast cauldron of snapshots. A lagoon that was fairly limited to the end user, it was neither searchable, nor specific to any Region or Country. That's when I decided not to follow the rest of the Sheep... and the four British/Irish sites were born.
Google Problems.
I was doing a site search one afternoon and was horrified to discover only the front page of all four sites were showing on Google. This down from several hundred the week before - what had happened would chart the course for a single domain that you see today.
Since the four sites were inexorably linked in style and relevance, it would be the aircraft section that would be my Achilles Heel. All four Country domains drew upon the same UK aircraft MySQL database. However innocent on my behalf, this triggered a "duplicate content" filter with Googlebot. I was devastated at the results. Overnight my hard work became virtually invisible to the World.
Single Domain name.
Determined to rid myself of the duplicate content prison, and wishing to see the site in a larger format, I embarked upon a journey to convert everything from 800 pix wide, to 1024. This was not a simple task of cutting and pasting content from the original sites to the new one. Everything was a different dimension, headers, columns etc. The whole site literally had to be redone over again. From concept to site launch, this would be an 18 month battle.
The birth of KlickThis.com.
What you see today, launched in June 2008 is a culmination of hard work from not only myself, but my wife. Endless hours of finding thousands of links to British/Irish websites. A massive database of just about every Hotel and B&B in the UK that run over 12,000 listings. Days of work by my friend, copying from a huge book. Articles that I wrote, researched and photographed myself. All in my quest to make this the most interesting portal of UK/Irish information on the Internet. Of course... we all have to crawl before we can walk. Patience is still ongoing.
You - The User.
Since the site expansion I wanted to make your visits as useful as possible. New personal galleries and admin panels were added so it became easier to view and edit your own stuff. Image sizes were now expanded from 1024 fixed, to a 900 - 1100 pixel parameter. Quality of images were increased from 200kB to 350kB and a comment feature was added to every single image in the database. Every one of your images now comes with an opportunity for individuals to contact you about your image. This completely void of any interference from us.
Thank You.
So there you have it in a few paragraphs. A brief synopsis of how the site came to fruition from some scribbles in a ring binder. Hard work and determination, but without you, the visitor, the photographer, the fascination you have for Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales. It would mean nothing if nobody showed up. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support and trust in not only the sites' functionality, but in me for putting this mental idea together. Thank you.
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