Four years on…

I never thought things would come this far four years ago, when I sat on my laptop hopelessly learning how to code and designing a rather rubbish layout for the site, whilst writing up biography pages, fact files and more for John Cena that J-Cena.com would stand as the number one fan-source for John Cena. This was all in hopes of getting my site visited, getting the site to be like Cena-Unleashed.net – who at the time held the monopoly on John Cena sites. I’d sit obsessing like a kid looking at how many hits and unique visitors I was getting a day. The site absolutely blew up and past my expectations and below you’ll find some interesting facts about the site that you may not have known.

Since our inception four years ago, we’ve served you 2,780 posts about John Cena, 19 different layouts, 13 members of staff and 45,000 tweets (OK, so not all were totally relevant to John Cena, but it seemed like a cool fact!). Likewise, you’ve helped us achieve 4.4 million image views, 3.4 million page hits, 32,000 Twitter followers and 7,000 Facebook ‘likes’. In short, the support we have received from you guys has been amazing. I never thought that this site would blow-up in popularity the way it has, and although you may bug us for not getting the news up straight away or not uploading those pesky captures, we love you all!

I worked out an alarming stat about this website last night: I’ve spent $4,000 in the upkeep of this website. This includes things like domain renewals, hosting costs, layout costs, giveaways and competition prizes and advertising costs! It’s taken quite the hit on my wallet over the years but if you were to ask me if I regret it, my response would be “Hell no!”

Although there have been times when I’ve just wanted to scream and throw a bitch-fit over some of the comments I’ve gotten off some not-so-nice people, it still wasn’t enough for me to give up the site. You’ve just got to adapt and overcome – or as John Cena says, “Rise Above Hate”.

A big thank you also needs to be shot the way of some of the most dedicated and helpful staff anyone could ever ask for, specifically Katie, Dana and Jen. I’d also like to extend a huge thank you to some of you on Twitter, such as Dan and Nimesh, as well as countless others who help to keep me sane and fill us in with any news we might have missed.

Thank you for the most amazing four years online – here’s to many, many more guys!