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The BTG: from 2006 to 2007Dateline: 31st December, 2006It's that Janus day, the day on which we look back and look forward. Naturally we have pages on theatre in the UK during the past year but in this short article I want to look back to what's happened on the BTG in 2006 and what we intend to happen in 2007. 2006 was a good year. As I am writing this, the number of page views we had during December - which, of course, doesn't finish until midnight tonight - stands at over half a million. That's pretty impressive, I think, when you consider that the period between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve is pretty dead (although we did have over 5,000 page views on Christmas Day). These page views do not count visits to the Forum which is held on a different server and for which I don't have access to statistics. Other statistics of interest include the fact that we have over 7,600 pages online and over 5,500 images. The pages include over 2,300 reviews, over 3,000 news pages, over 750 articles, over 417 devoted to the Edinburgh Fringe and over 110 interviews. There are thirty regular or occasional reviewers. The Newsletter - 263 editions to date, plus nineteen Newsletter Extras - has just short of 2,500 subscribers. Website rankings vary from month to month - indeed, from week to week - but for the last year we have consistently been ranked (by Ranking.com) between seventh and thirteenth in the Theatre category internationally. We have been consistently in the top five of UK-based theatre sites. That, then, is 2006. Where do we go in 2007? Obviously we hope to continue to grow, in page views, in rank, in the number of pages, in Newsletter subscribers and in the number of reviewers and correspondents. We intend to continue to provide up-to-the-minute news and reviews - and we hope to increase the areas of the UK which our reviewers cover. Out focus will continue to be on news and reviews of current shows throughout the UK, but we also hope to widen the scope of the more timeless material we carry. This last year has seen a huge increase in the number of reviews of books of interest to the general theatregoer and the academic: in 2007 this will continue and we hope to widen the scope to, for example, novels with a theatrical background. One new idea (to us, that it: it's hardly new!): in the next couple of weeks we'll be starting the BTG Blog. The technical preparations have been made - it's now just a case of the actual set-up being done and testing carried out. I hope we'll be able to announce it by 14th January at the latest. Every so often we announce that a new design is imminent but it's never happened. That's because we haven't yet come up with a design which is easier to use and navigate, but we'll keep trying. Who knows? 2007 may be the year!
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