What's New at anvilfire! XI

Almost every day we are adding new items. In order to help you find the newest additions we have added this page. Here we will try to log changes and additions by date as we make them. There will always be daily changes in the Virtual Hammer-In and the Guru page.

In April 1998 we launched anvilfire.com!
In 1999 we launched the following new features:
  • iForge
  • Web-Ring Nexus
  • Emile's Hot Links
  • AnvilCAM
  • International Registry of
    Blacksmith Touchmarks

  • ABANA 2000 JYH Event
  • ABANA-Chapter.com
  • In 2000 we added:
  • CSI Members & Forum
  • Armoury Page
  • Story Page
  • anvilfire Store
  • Rings @ anvilfire.com!
    We setup our own Ringlink webring hosting system and moved our webrings to it.
  • We now host:
  • The Blacksmiths Ring
  • Steelworkers Webring
  • Country Life and Heritage
  • Architectural Metals*
  • Archeaometalurgy*
  • More to come. . .
    * New - no members
  • In 2001 we added:
  • Archives Page w/ Search
  • Anti-Spam System
  • Shop Safety Page
  • NEW Book Review Page
  • w/ Paw-paw's Corner
  • Revolutionary Blacksmith
  • Slack-Tub Pub Rogues Gallery
  • On-Line Metals Store
  • Anvilfire Tool Auction
  • Drop Down Menus
  • 41 iForge demos
  • James Nasmyth Biography
  • Victor Vera Biography
  • All NEW FAQ's Page
  • In 2002 we have added:
  • Book II of Paw-Paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith
  • Two stories by J.M. Gerlinsky
  • Ray Smiths Notebook of Metalworking Origins
  • Metalworking Glossary
  • International Glossary
  • FAQs dropdown menu
  • NEW Store with Shopping Cart!
  • Mass3j Mass and Volume Caculator
  • Contact Form
  • Edited many new FAQs
  • ABANA Conference NEWS
  • Declared war on SPAM
  • Added clickable iForge images
  • Updated the Slack-Tub Pub System
  • New ABANA-Chapter header
  • 7 New Book/CD Reviews
  • In 2003 we will add:
  • NEW Archives Search system
  • NEW Web Rings. .

  • What's New archive I (12/98)
    What's New archive II (6/99)
    What's New archive III (12/99)
    What's New archive IV (1st Qtr 2000)
    What's New archive V (2nd Qtr 2000)
    What's New archive VI (3rd-4th Qtr 2k)
    What's New archive VII (1st 1/2 2001)
    What's New archive VIII (2nd 1/2 2001)
    What's New archive IX (1st 1/2 2002)
    What's New archive X (2nd 1/2 2002)

    NOVEMBER 1, 2002 * We have our 2,000,000th visitor!

    That is over ONE MILLION per year (353 days). Our curent traffic rate is 1.67 million/year and will exceed 2 million/year sometime next year! This is following the same increase that has had us equaling the total accumulated traffic of the prior years!


    January 1, 2003 @ 2,255,000 Year Start.
    January 6, 2003 @ 2,281,300
    The year 2003 started at 2,255,000 counts. That was 255,000 visits from November 1st until December 31st (61 days) with an average of 4180 visits per day. We have averaged 4383 visits/day since new years. That is a 1.6 million visit per year rate. At our current rate of growth we will likely end 2003 at a rate of over 2.5 million visits per year.

    We now have 144 registered CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    Posted the last chapter of Book II of Paw-Paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith a couple days late.

    Archived this page for 2002.
    January 11, 2003 @ 2,305,081
    We now have 145 registered CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    January 17, 2003 @ 2,331,950
    We now have 2051 registered Slack-Tub Pub users but I have not done a check up mailing in many months so that number is high. I am trying to catch up on a backlog of registrations and have half finished. There are at least 30 more to go dating back to Christmas. I am very sorry for the delay.

    We now have 147 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    THANK YOU CSI MEMBERS! Without you there would be no anvilfire!

    We have had 76,000 visits in 17 days! That is an average of over 4,500/day. Other traffic indicators are UP such as the rate of Slack-Tub Pub registrations, Web-ring applications and my mail.
    January 23, 2003 @ 2,362,429
    We now have 148 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    January 29, 2003 @ 2,391,313 We now have 149 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    Added FOUR new items to the Story page. A new installement to Ray Smiths Notebook, A translation of an Italian blacksmith story, A poem by Quenchcrack, AND The Blacksmith's Twelve Commandments by Quenchcrack, Chopper, PPW and Mark P. Sorry for the delays guys. .
    January 31, 2003 @ 2,403,000 We now have 150 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    We had over 148,000 visits to anvilfire in January. That is an average of 4,774 visitors per day! Many web sites don't have that many visitors in a year. That puts our annual hit rate at over 1.7 million. We are quickly on our way to that 2.5 million rate we expect by the end of the year.

    We are now suffering from the problems of our success. I am way behind in processing Slack-Tub Pub registrations, archiving the Hammer-In and we only had two iForge demos last month. I am constantly in "catch-up" mode. On top of everything else we are moving the server AND building new web pages for others.
    February 1-2, 2003 @ 2,408,837
    Today was a sad day. The Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry today. All 7 aboard are lost. The crew was one that would have made Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame happy. The crew included two women, one from India, a black man and an Isreali Air Force pilot. Racial, policitcal and religious diversity in one crew with a common cause, the exploration of space. Many comments in the forums.

    I finaly archived the V-Hammer-In for November/December. December 2002 was a record for the Hammer-In but the previous December was similar. Cabin fever? Maybe. All our forums seem to pick up in the winter and we have too few users in the Southern hemisphere to balance. And there are no really far Southern locations other than Antartica that have winter conditions to support a Southern Hemisphere version of cabin fever.
    February 19, 2003 @ 2,485,802
    WOW! I've been so busy that its been two weeks since I last posted updates. Much has been going on in the background related to moving to a new server, but I have also been building web pages and doing promotional work for some clients. anvilfire is still not self supporting and the other work helps keep things moving.
    We now have 152 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    March 3, 2003 @ 2,539,074
    Archived the guru page for the past two weeks breaking it down into seperate weeks.

    The short very wintery month of February ended at 2,530,000 hits for a total of 122,000 for the month. That is an average of 4207 visits per day. Down a little which is typical of February. Even with a lot of folks with cabin fever February seems to be a bad month for traffic AND sales. This years sales were MUCH better than last years near ZERO sales but they WERE down. Seems to be a trend.

    I am now two months behind on Slack-Tub Pub registrations and I am very sorry. We need an automated system that prevents duplicates as well as checking e-mail addresses for validity but it is a difficult thing to do. The manual system (ME) has broken down. The need for office help is greater than ever but still not in the buget.
    March 11, 2003 @ 2,575,395
    FINALLY Posted chapter 1 of Book III of The Revolutionary Blacksmith. Enjoy!
    March 18, 2003 @ 2,600,902
    Updated the Spear Point demo with a photo of the author, Bruce "Atli" Blackstone, in costume with spear taken at the Jamestown "Military Through the Ages" weekend.

    I was going to note the passing of the 2.5 million visit mark but we have just passed 2.6!
    March 20, 2003 @ 2,609,370
    Posted a new long awaited iForge demo last night (our 156th) by Genia Burch on making a Lilly Candle Stick. Archived the guru page today (a weekly chore) and noted that the anvilfire archives amount to 30 Mb of data. Remember a short time ago when 20 MB was a large PC hard drive? Our archives amount to about 10% of our counted traffic.

    Caught up on some of the more recent Pub registrations but still have many to do. Total is now 2112 registered but we have not done a checkup mailing in almost a year so there may be considerably less.
    April 1, 2003 @ 2,654,804 (Since April 1998)
    124,800 visits in March.
    Updated the heat threating FAQ with 5160 tempering data. Added a wrought iron FAQ.
    We now have 156 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    April 15, 2003 (US TAX day) @ 2,709,777
    CORRECTION: Updated the Blacksmith/Devil folk tale translated by Patricia Fann Bouteneff. I had noted it was Italian, it was Greek.
    We now have 157 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    April 22, 2003 @ 2,736,602
    SERVER DOWN TIME This week our server will be OFF LINE for several hours during a move. Tentatively it is scheduled for the early hours (4am EST) of Thursday April 24th.
    April 24, 2003 @ 2,746,027 BLACK THURSDAY
    Due to our server host moving our server (physicaly 300 miles), we were off-line from 4am EST until 5pm EST today and then it took another 5 hours for the new address to filter down to some ISP's (such as mine). The secure servers are still not working. . . .

    Sorry for the interuptions (ABANA-Chapter and other sites we host were also off-line). This was the longest we have been off-line over 5 years. Looks like 4 hours is becoming 24 hours. . .
    May 1, 2003 @ 2,773,882
    Welcome back Centaur Forge. After a year's absence under the temporary management of the heirs of Bill and Bonnie Pieh Centaur Forge is back as an advertiser and supporter of anvilfire.com.

    April has been another slow month in overall traffic (down to 119,078/month). So far we have had 519,000 visits this year. However, the forums have been doing a booming business. The guru page logged 840 Kbytes of Q&A and the Hammer-In 235.

    The black mark this month is that I am yet again way behind on slack-tub pub registrations and yet another month has passed an I have not posted the NEW chapter of Paw-Paws book. . .

    We now have
    • 2118 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    • 232 forum archives pages spanning 5 years starting in April of 1998!
    • 157 iForge demos.
    • 157 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    • 127 Blacksmiths Ring sites (lost two due to dissapearance from web).
    • 37 Steelworkers Webring sites (with some duplication from above).
    • 1998 - 36,000 hits for 2/3 long startup year (~80k/yr)
    • 1999 - 152,900 hits for our first full year ending at 188,900
    • 2000 - 336,600 hits for our third year ending at 498,500
    • 2001 - 590,300 hits for our fourth year ending at 1,088,800
    • 2002 - 1,166,000 hits for our fifth year ending at 2,255,000
    • 2003 - Can we double our traffic AGAIN? Maybe. . .

    May 2, 2003 @ 2,779,338
    Posted Edition 28 of the NEWS. Event announcements. Southeast Conference information. NEW Edition SOON with coverage of current events.
    May 4-5, 2003 @ 2,785,550 (wee hours)
    Back from the WV Armour-In. Had lots of fun but very tired. . . New NEWS coming! Posted correct link to Pieh Tool Company website in NEWS article.
    May 12-13, 2003 @ 2,818,928 (wee hours)
    Posted Volume 29 of the anvilfire NEWS covering the WV Armour-In.
    We plan to post Southeastern Conference photos FROM the conference this weekend. But I need to find a local ISP in Madison!
    May 15-16, 2003 @ 2,832,044 (wee hours)
    Posted Volume 30 of the NEWS from Madison, Georgia, USA. Beginning coverage of the Southeast Regional Blacksmith Conference. Will try to post more photos Friday and Saturday night.
    May 18, 2003 (wee hours)
    Posted anvil shoot pages on Volume 30 of the NEWS from Madison, Georgia, USA. MORE coming!
    May 20, 2003 4:22-6:18pm EDT @ 2,848,880
    Posted Boone demo page on Volume 30 of the NEWS from Madison, Georgia, USA.
    Posted pages with Kaynes, Euroanvil and Ivan Boggs demo (in progres). MORE coming!
    June 2, 2003 @ 2,900,000
    We are rapidly approaching THREE MILLION visits! Should happen by the end of July.
      May traffic was 120,540.
    • 2191 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    • 237 forum archives pages spanning 5 years starting in April of 1998!
    • 158 iForge demos.
    • 162 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    • 130 Blacksmiths Ring sites (lost two due to dissapearance from web).
    • 38 Steelworkers Webring sites (with some duplication from above).

    June 10, 2003 @ 2,930,756
    Archived the guru and hammer-in pages. The guru page may have to go to 5 achives a month instead of 4.
    June 18, 2003 @ 2,960,212
    Posted the long awaited Chapter 2 of Book III of Pawpaw's The Revolutionary Blacksmith. The delay is strictly my fault. -jdd Illustrations coming.
    June 21, 2003
    Posted illustrations for Chapter 2 of Book III of Pawpaw's The Revolutionary Blacksmith.
    June 26, 2003 @ 2,985,942
    Posted three new book reviews (in progress). Blacksmith's Manual Illustrated by J.W.Lillico, Metals for Engineering Craftsmen and Decorative Ironwork by CoSIRA, now The Countryside Agency. All three books are carried by ArtisanIdeas.com
    June 30, 2003 @ 3,000,000
    We have broken the three million visitor mark this morning. Traffic is down a little. That is 745,000 visits since January 1st for an average of 4082 visits a day.
    END - 52,806   (July 29)

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