When I first started this blog at the end of January 2015 I thought I’d just make the occasional blog post about college tennis and maybe a few would read it. Fast forward to October 2016 and my site has logged over 850,000 page views so I decided it was time to create a new site that looked better and functioned better. The google blogger platform isn’t bad at all but it has its limitations which is why I started looking to do something else. 

This new site gives me the option to load up my menu bar with multiple drop-downs so I’ve been able to put more information up there that stays up there. On my blogger site there wasn’t an option to do drop-down menus so I had to remove certain items to keep the menu bar from getting too cluttered. I added a tab under men’s and women’s that lists every tennis playing school with links to their school’s tennis page, roster, and schedule so that should give everyone easy access to their favorite team (will be a work in progress adding the links). I loaded up the news tab with links to websites that do a good job covering college tennis plus I have a section that includes student newspapers and message boards. The events tab will be for major events like the NCAAs, conference tounaments, and the National Team Indoors. The other tab will be a catch-all for any tidbit of information that doesn’t fit anywhere else. I’ll probaby shift things around a little bit over the next month to find the best look so please be patient. 

Almost 50% of my page views come via mobile so I wanted to make sure that the mobile layout was greatly improved and it is with this new site.  

While I love the enthusiasm of everyone that comments I’m making a shift going forward and will only publish comments with a name attached to it so no more anonymous. I’m hoping this will reduce some of the name calling and negative comments because I really want this to be a positive place for anyone that follows college tennis. The comments form asks for an email address but that will not be published – the only thing that will show up is your name and comment. 

The biggest reason I made the change is because I’m at a point where I need to have some income on this site to continue to be able to devote the kind of time that I’ve devoted over the last 21 months. I’ve had a few advertisers in place for the last several months and several people have made generous donations but for the most part I’ve been doing everything for free with my biggest expense being my time. Most don’t know that I do have a fuller than full-time job as a stay-at-home dad to a now four-year old son and early next year my wife and I will be welcoming another addition to our family which means my workload will grow even more. 

I’m committed to putting the time in, wherever I can find it, to keep improving College Tennis Today but I’ll need the support of the college tennis community to make it happen. Starting on January 1st I’m going to have a premium content category that will include season previews, match previews, live scoring links, ranking projections, ATP rankings of players with college ties, and more. I’ll have a monthly and yearly option with the monthly option expected to fall in the $9 range (.33 per day). I still plan on having plenty of free content but I’m hopeful that my subscriber base will help me work towards my goal of making College Tennis Today a full-time job. 

I love college tennis and love bringing the college tennis community together so hopefully I’ll be doing it for many years to come.

FYI, if you had my old site, collegetennistoday.blogspot.com, bookmarked you can change that to collegetennistoday.com. My blogspot address will be forwarded to this new domain in the coming days.