The first three months of 2016 were kind of crazy busy for me and for the site. And if I had to pick one thing as my main focus, I’d say that was growing the Baeldung team.

We started the year with a technical editor, about 6 or 7 authors and a part time VA; we’re now at 3 technical editors, about 20 or so authors, a full time marketing person and a VA, and we’re close to hiring a video person as well.

It feels like writing procedures and documentation is all I’m doing these days.

The Q1 Numbers

Let’s start with the overall traffic in Q1:

The Q1 growth has definitely been good – a solid 31% increase over the last quarter of 2015.

On to the referrer traffic:

No big changes here – the same sites are sending Baeldung the same kind of traffic.

Finally, we’re approaching the 1000 students milestone in REST With Spring, which is huge. I’m going to take the day off when that happens 🙂

The Plan for Q2

First off, the new design is almost ready to go and should be rolling out over the next week or so. This is the first real design and branch change in over 4 years – needless to say I’m really excited about it.

Here’s what the new logo looks like:

It’s definitely going to be interesting seeing how readers like the new experience and of course what effect that’s going to have over the numbers.

Next – hiring and procedures are another major priority. With three technical editors, there’s going to be a lot more content being published – and I’m working hard on allowing that to happen. Right now, I’m the biggest bottleneck in a few areas, so the focus is unblocking the team and solving that issue.

Finally, my main focus in Q2 is of course writing and producing the material of the new course – Learn Spring Security. That takes most of my time, energy and focus – and it’s the major reasons I need allow the team to help with the content.