Today is this website’s birthday. If it was a school child, it would be starting Year 1. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for six years. I published my first post on this day in March 2009. If you want to see how bad I was at writing at that point, click here. Since then though I have become a little more polished at churning out the content. And speaking of content, these are the 5 most read posts on this site of all time:

1. Tackling The Trickle Vent Issue

2. FENSA vs Certass: What’s The Difference?

3. Solidor At Odds With Door-Stop

4. Bi-folding Doors – Which Material is Right for Your Project?

5. National Average Prices Survey: Results

From rag tag to polished magazine

If you have been a DGB reader from the start, you will have seen this website grow from a rag tag, basic anonymous blog based on Google’s Blogger platform, to what it is today.

I started the site as a place to voice my own opinions and frustrations on our industry after seeing what Renegade Conservatory Guy had been doing. I took aim at everyone and anything, hoping to ruffle feathers and draw attention to issues that weren’t being talked about, but what I felt should be.

After breaking stories I maybe shouldn’t have. Getting under the skin of people many times. DGB had to grow up. I moved to WordPress around three years ago. I gave it a more professional, slicker look that Blogger could give me. I even got a few sponsors on board as well to help the site grow even more. It’s had a few looks since then, but how you see DGB now is how it will probably look for a while now.

I’m also working harder than ever to bring better content to you on a daily basis. If I am truly honest, I didn’t think 2014 was my best year for content. I felt like I was just going through the motions with many of the posts, not really putting them together in the most engaging way possible. So at the start of this year, I said to myself that I was going to try much harder to bring daily posts that everyone would actually want to read and engage with. I reckon I’m doing a good job with that. DGB is approaching a staggering 5000 comments and nearly 2000 blog posts. The amount of content and reader input on this site is simply staggering now.

Plans for the future

After reaching the six year mark, I really would like to get DGB to the decade milestone. Ten years of daily industry blogging, industry interaction and bringing issues to the fore that I feel need to be talked about. That I guess would be my first medium to long term goal for the site. Beyond that? Who knows. Real life may play a part in the year to come, with kids and homes bringing me well and truly back down to earth. What I do with DGB at those points is unknown.

However my immediate aims with this site are far more aggressive and energetic. I want to get DGB to be one of the most read, if not most read website in the UK fenestration industry. I want to produce content and features on here that will pull readers away from other areas of the industry and demonstrate to them the beauty of online publication. The sky is the limit when it comes to growth. DGB has grown every year so far without fail, with some years posting huge gains on the year before. I fully intend on keeping that trend going.

I will continue to introduce new features, such as my Design online magazine, to keep the site moving and fresh. And I promise that consumer section is coming!

A huge thanks to all those who have supported DGB over the past six years, it really is truly appreciated! Big thanks to the sponsors that help keep DGB growing, allowing it to venture into wider areas. Big thumbs up to anyone who has commented, tweeted, +1’d, Liked and shared any of my posts over social media. All of this support is what makes this site work so well.

Here’s to the next four years and a decade in blogging!

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