Today I paid Indie Auto’s quarterly sales taxes, so this is a good time to say thank you to recent donors. We’re too small to offer trinkets, and Indie Auto doesn’t even have a partial paywall. Thus I particularly appreciate those of you who have shown your support. I am able to offer an unusually independent take on the automobile because Indie Auto doesn’t accept ads — we are entirely reader supported.
With winter comes power outages
Indie Auto’s world headquarters are located in a forested area south of Seattle, Washington. Once the winter storms hit, we invariably lose power. That is starting to happen unusually early this year. In the last week our power went out twice — the second time for two days. During outages I usually can’t post new content. In addition, my ability to approve pending comments is limited.
As a follow up to a previous post, I am continuing to care for my wife as she recovers from foot surgery. She is still relegated to a wheelchair and needs intensive help. That curtails the amount of time I can work on Indie Auto. Thank you for your patience.
Why the new front-page format?
Indie Auto’s front page was recently changed in a number of ways. The most obvious one was that I ditched the large banner photo. It was eating up so much disk storage space that I would have had to upgrade to a more costly hosting plan. I would consider doing that if readers expressed an interest in Indie Auto’s photography. However, I have received close to zero feedback on that.
I tell you this partly to illustrate how I appreciate hearing what you find most compelling about Indie Auto. Our readership is now large enough that I can’t be responsive to everyone’s individual interests. However, it greatly helps to know what you would like to see in these pages. So don’t be shy about sharing your thoughts in the comments.
Another format change was to reduce the number of items on the front page in order to increase its loading speed. This goes hand in hand with work I have been doing on inside posts to increase search engine optimization.
The front-page format was also simplified so it takes less time to post new content, which my template requires that I do manually. These changes aren’t very sexy, but they add up to a website that is more effective and easier to operate.
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