An interview with Ian...

[Ian]

Hey guys,

 

Another site focused on virtual pets (virtualpetlist.com) did an interview on me and I just thought I would post it here since not many of you know the secret thoughts that go through my little brain. Enjoy!

 

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Ian is the owner of the popular neopets fansite, The Daily Neopets and he has taken the time out to answer a few questions for us.

 

Can you give us a brief bio?

 

Yup. My name is Ian and I was born in Columbus, OH. Right now I am 15 years of age and have enjoyed played Neopets since I was a young, little lad. I've grown out of Neopets, but the love for my fan site has kept me going on. It only makes sense to run one... being the neoveteran that I am! I enjoy to run, program, play my guitar (and drums), write songs, and run my website -- The Daily Neopets! Quite an odd mix, if you ask me, but that's what I like to do. ;)

 

What is your educational background?

 

I went to a "regular" brick-and-mortar school up until the 4th grade. Then in 5th grade, due to speedskating and traveling, I went to an online public school, in hopes of having more free time for speedskating. Right now, I still attend that online public school and am doing very well. Most people think that homeschooling is easy and homeschoolers have "the life" but they truly don't. My coursework is a step above most regular schools and is pretty hard. Gotta love those huge, 100-point essays nearly every week. :P But yeah, you do have more free time though.

 

What do you consider as your accomplishments up to this point?

 

I consider The Daily Neopets to be my biggest (and most obvious) accomplishment. We receive about 20,000 visitors a day from all over the globe. Since The Daily Neopets' opening a few years ago, I've estimated that the site has reached well over 2 million Neopets players. I consider this a huge milestone and recently we've only kept on growing thanks to the support of our fans!

 

I also consider the team at The Daily Neopets to be a big accomplishment too. I wouldn't be able to run a fan site as massive as TDN is without help from some extra hands. We've pulled ourselves together on numerous projects and have accomplished them all and have done them well. I'm privileged to be working with the staff members that we have at The Daily Neopets. It's a truly remarkable team like no other!

 

Any partnerships you'd like to tell us about?

 

The Daily Neopets has received quite a few offers over the past few years to enter into a long-term partnership, but I've never have seen the need to do so. We hope to remain and independent fan site that is operated by fans for fans. Yup... what can I say? We're kind of against big companies that are out to just make money. We hope to remain an independent fan site until the end of time... unless somebody has an outrageously good offer.

 

What is your full-time job?

 

Well, I'm 15 and still a full-time student, so right now I don't technically have a full-time job. I consider the work that I do on The Daily Neopets as my "work" or "job" but nothing full-time.

 

What projects / other internet ventures are you involved in?

 

I'm an experienced PHP programmer and have ventured into the area of creating certain softwares (such as CMS, forums, new systems, etc) but have never actually completed a full-scale project. The Daily Neopets is going through some internal changes right now and after those changes are complete, I hope to create some type of enterprise software for others to use. I don't know when that might happen, but I hope soon. Believe it or not, but I actually like to program!

 

How much money does TDN bring in? You don't have to disclose the exact amount, but more of a general figure.

 

Enough to pay the freakin' huge server costs.

 

How did TDN come to be? When did development begin?

 

The Daily Neopets was originally a "Neopets news" branch off PinkPT. At the time, PinkPT didn't provide unreleased Neopets news like it does now, so The Daily Neopets' job was to provide exactly that. Eventually the site exploded after a few weeks, receiving well over 500-1000 visits a day. Eventually I said to Kym (PinkPT's owner), "hey how much do you want for the domain?" He said, "what I paid for it: $10." I bought TDN and it was "officially" mine. The Daily Neopets continued on from there as it's own independent fan site and broke a part from PinkPT...

 

The first few months of TDN were very slow and sluggish. We had a horrible blue layout with a Jelly Blumaroo in the header; things looked awful. Over time, we have had numerous layout changes and changes in infrastructure. Now, what you see is "TDN version Y2" (which stands for Year 2, when it was released). And guess what... we're probably going to do another big site makeover here soon!

 

What advice can you give to people working in the neopets fansites niche?

 

Break out of the mold. There are billions and billions of Neopets fan sites that pop up every day... it's just ridiculous though! Every site looks the same! It provides the same types of services, same style of layout (your typical header, left navigation, right navigation layout), and essentially duplicate content from other sites. My challenge to Neopets fan site owners is to create something unique... a unique service. Why try and re-invent the wheel? Don't provide guides and content to 20 games that already have 20 guides written for them on another site. Provide a unique service... a few of them have popped up in the past few years (such as AvatarLog and Kadoatery) and have proved to be very successful.

 

If you have something unique... they will come.

 

How long have you been working on TDN? How long have you been a neopets player?

 

I have been working on TDN ever since it opened as a branch off PinkPT. I've been a Neopets player for as long as I can remember. I wasn't a member when Neopets first opened, but shortly there after I was hooked and fell in love with the game.

 

Where do you see TDN heading in the next 2 years? 5 years?

 

My goal for TDN in the next couple of years is to totally top every other site out there and nearly provide everything (help, tools, guides, hint) that has anything to do with Neopets. In the end, The Daily Neopets wants to take over the world, over Google, over the United States government, and reign supreme over all. No, that's taken a bit too far, but you get the idea! Whilst adding all of these new things to the site, we hope to maintain quality content that The Daily Neopets has always provided.

 

In the next five years, I have no idea where TDN might be. It's fun to dream, but I truly don't know. So... I don't like to waste the time dreaming.

 

Do you think Neopets is going downhill? If so, what can they change to improve?

 

Yup, I think that Neopets will be meeting its doom here within the next decade. Maybe not a complete doom, but a significant decline in fans and players. Right now Neopets doesn't seem to be releasing any new features to its players. Sure, they released the NeoCash Mall, but that's just a way for them to make more money. I'm talking about new features and new things to do on the site (e.g., more fun activities). Have you noticed that on Neopets' official news page they almost NEVER release ANYTHING new? It's just your typical caption, new colors, shopkeepers, and items update. Nothing new, really! Neopets will eventually suffocate itself if it doesn't release anything new here soon.

 

If it's not internal destruction that will get Neopets (e.g., no new features) then it will be external destruction that Neopets might experience. Two large pet sites are on the rise (namely Marapets and Subeta) and honestly, they might have a shot at contesting Neopets if they really rev up their sites. Not only is Neopets competing with other pet sites, they are also fighting with competitors in parallel niches, such as Webkinz. Webkinz is a HUGE thing on the internet right now. What about Club Penguin? There are so many other competitors in other niches targeting teens and youth... I doubt Neopets will be able to keep their stronghold.

 

Unfortunately I'm not optimistic about Neopets continuing on forever and ever amen...

 

Besides neopets, what's your favorite pet site?

 

Marapets seems to have a lot of fun features. They seem to be taking a different approach of having character dolls and more community-focused events rather than "all pets" like Neopets. I think that this is working to their advantage because "all pets" is very limited. Marapets is more of a social networking site. Unfortunately their community is filled with a *lot* of people who don't really know how to talk or spell intelligently, which is somewhat of a turnoff. A great place for kids though!

 

Subeta is pretty cool, but their community is weird. Marapets is probably my second favorite, next to Neopets.

 

If you can branch TDN into a helpsite for all pet sites, what pet sites would you love to cover?

 

Ahh... a very interesting topic! I think that our first topic would being Marapets, then Subeta. I honestly don't think any other pet sites would be worth covering (except MAYBE Powerpets) because most pet sites aren't unique these days. After Marapets and Subeta were covered, I might attempt to cover Club Penguin (a very popular game right now) and possibly Webkinz. It's fun to think about.

 

How many staff members do you currently have working for you?

 

Exactly 7. :)

 

What CMS does TDN use? (wordpress, joomla, or..?)

 

I programmed The Daily Neopets' CMS all by myself. I was quite the undertaking, I must say. :) I cannot even begin to explain the infrastructure of the site, but it's pretty cool. We have a cool little (BIG) admin panel that allows us to control page categories, page content, site layout elements, navigation, and a bunch of other fancy stuff like that. On top of that, we have a couple of cron jobs running to keep things in order and to update the site, clean out junk, clear stuff up, etc.

 

The reason why I decided to create my own CMS is because I was never really satisfied with other content management systems. Joomla is a monster, 'nuf said. I never really considered Wordpress at the time when the site was being "built" because I wasn't as tech-savvy as I am now (I would use it now if I were creating another content-driven site). I believe that every site is unique and has it's own overall structure, so I decided to make a custom content management to suit our needs.

 

How many daily unique visitors does TDN receive? How long did it take you guys to reach these numbers?

 

I think I (accidentally) already mentioned these numbers before. About 20,000 visits per day. We have been hitting these numbers just recently (over Thanksgiving break is when this occurred). Earlier in the game, we started out with 500-1000 visits a day (branch off PinkPT). When the Altador Plot rolled around, we got about 3,000-4,000 a day. Over the summer of 2007, we experienced explosive growth to over 10,000 visits a day. This fall has rolled around and, like I said, over Thanksgiving break we've hit 20,000. I smile every time I look at our stats. :)

 

If you could change one thing, or more on TDN what would it be?

 

I would change the overall organizational infrastructure of the site. Our content management system is pretty cool, no doubt, when I wasn't thinking with much forethought when I built it. So, naturally, there are some organizational and permissions problems and honestly, they aren't easy fixes because, again, I wasn't thinking with forethought. I've hinted that we might be redoing the site and giving the layout a makeover and along with this, I might start from scratch with a new CMS because I'm so frustrated with the organizational side of the site. We really need to straighten out our 102389479-link navigations too. We're almost becoming too big for ourselves and we need an organizational makeover, ya know?

 

Thank you for taking the time out to answer our questions, Ian; we hope you have a great day!

 

Thanks for having me! God bless!

[Parshy]

wow, that's a good job

For the last question, how about Puting links under a colpsable thing like avlog?

[Guest Levy]

Nice interview, get an interview from the New York Times now! I dare ya!

[cpvr]

Thank you, Ian! :)

http://www.virtualpetlist.com/showthread.php?t=7550 (where the interview is)

[Superfly]

*dials* 1-800-new-york-times

 

*ringing*

 

"Hello, I'd like to schedule an interview..."

 

XD Now, that interview would be an interesting mix of stuff.

 

I learned things I never knew before from this interview. ;D

[Parshy]

Thanks for that cvpr

I vote on subeta

[Xepha]

Each member of TGT should get their own spotlight too ;o

[xXMoonlightXx]

Woah that was alot of question... I know everything about you O.O woah.... BUt tenically i don't since scientist say that you yourself know most of yourself since you ... NEvermind...

[cpvr]

Thanks for that cvpr

I vote on subeta

You're welcome. I'm willing to interview any staff member here if you'd like.

[Mike.]

Wow...I never knew you were homeschooled!

[xXMoonlightXx]

=O you work here Mikey! THis is bad very bad.. =( but homeschooled is so cheap money saving XD

[antiaircraft]

I was homeschooled for a while, since I was already waaay ahead of the curriculum. XD

 

Nice to know more about the great and powerful Ian!

[xXMoonlightXx]

phear my awsomeness pwning knowlege/enycopliteic knowledge of ummnnn WOrld dominationXD

[Ellie_Penguin]

Woah I also didn't know you were homeschooled. I don't know why I found it funny when you said that Neopets will eventually go downhill LOL.

[antiaircraft]

Everything has its peaks, but all good things come to an end (although the bad things tend to stay forever).

[Fable]

Nice interview, I agree with you saying Neopets is going downhill.

[Zac]

I DID know you were homeschooled (you've might've mentioned it to me, i think...) I didnt know you speed-skate though.

 

That's cool. I can't skate to save my life ;)