Time moves fast when you are having fun.  It just doesn’t seem possible that Elvisblog is now two years old.  Writing a new article each week for Elvis fans to enjoy has been a labor of love, and to my great relief, there has never been a week when I couldn’t come up with a new subject to write about.

Total content after two years comes to 106 blog articles, 24 reprints of articles from Elvis…The Magazine, 10 Elvisblog News updates, and two short Christmas stories about Elvis.  In the next few weeks two more articles from the magazine will be posted.

During the past year, changes to Elvisblog included a switch in archive categories.  They are now done by topic rather than month, which makes it easier for readers to find articles that may interest them.  I also figured out how to add pictures to the articles, and I will do that from time to time when it really adds to the story.

Elvis fans have visited Elvisblog over 80,000 times since it began.  This still leaves it well behind some of the big websites devoted to Elvis, but readership is steadily growing all the time.  This past January 8, 2007, set a new one-day record of 292 hits.  My blog software lists the articles accessed each day, and there are always one or two new visitors who catch up and read dozens of my Elvis stories at one sitting.

The software also shows that Elvisblog has been translated into six or seven languages, including Chinese.  I print them out and have no idea what a couple of the languages are.  It’s fun to see how your name is spelled in Chinese, but Elvis is not translated.  It is still spelled E l v i s.

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My special thanks go out to Scotty Moore for adding www.elvisblog.net as a link from his excellent website.  I’ve done four stories about Scotty and there will be more before and after his “Last Man Standing” double-concert tribute in Memphis this summer.  If you are going to Elvis Week 2007, you need to take in this show.  It will be great.

It is comforting that Elvis-related news items keep popping up and giving me inspiration for interesting blog articles.  Even when it doesn’t, I’ve got files bulging with ideas and background material, so I should be able to meet the challenge of posting a new story each week in 2007.

Phil Arnold

Creator and Host of Elvisblog

Man, what a fast year.  Things started on January 30, 2005, when I posted the first article to Elvisblog.  There was some pressure of course, since you don’t know for sure if you can come up with a new article every Sunday.  It is now 53 articles later, so it looks like Elvisworld provides an abundance of story ideas.  .

The original plan was to post articles containing 250-300 words, in keeping with the site’s subtitle “Nuggets of News, History, and Commentary About Elvis.”  Now they run from 450-550 words.  Elvis is really fun to write about, so they may get even longer.

In addition to the weekly articles, Elvisblog now contains reprints of 22 longer pieces from Elvis International, The Magazine.  There are also two short stories of Elvis fiction:  “The Bootleg Album” and “Elvis Claus -- Santa’s Favorite Brother Gets A Present.”  Check them out if you haven’t already.

In November, Elvisblog switched to a new blogware supplier and a new internet address, www.elvisblog.net.  Since February 1, the old address no longer automatically forwards to the new, so I’ve lost a few readers.  Hope they find their way back to Elvisblog.  If you haven’t bookmarked www.elvisblog.net, please do so.

During it’s first year, 34,000 fans visited Elvisblog, so, I say to you all, “Thank you, thank you very much.”

(c)  2005   Philip R Arrnold   www.elvisblog.net