A year ago today, A2Central.com relaunched, bringing decades of content back online with the promise of more to come. The past twelve months have been a wonderful start to this site yet again being a part of the Apple II community. We’ve quietly accomplished quite a bit in our first year:
- We published 83 news posts (68 in 2023 and 15 in 2024) — more content than the site has seen since 2016!
- We relaunched the site with three resource directories, then added six more — serving as your total guide to Apple II hardware developers, software vendors, podcasts, message boards, and more
- The site was indexed by Google News, making it easier to subscribe to our updates
- Hosting was migrated from its ancestral home of DreamHost to Pressable — both excellent, reliable providers, but the latter with much-needed greater storage capacity
- The site’s founder and its current administrator joined forces to present the history of A2Central.com at KansasFest 2023
As we look back, we also ask: What might the future hold? Although we can’t commit to a timeline, the following are on our wish list (an internal Trello board):
- Republish the software that was once hosted here under the “Lost Classics” brand
- Republish the feature stories that were lost when this site migrated to WordPress in 2007
- Add an event calendar for conventions such as KansasFest, WOzFest, Oz KFest, Vintage Computer Fest, and Kennett Classic
- Recruit more writers!
To that last point, did you know that A2Central.com accepts community submissions? It’s true! If you have hardware, software, events, or more that you want to share with our community, please let us know! We’d be happy to set you up with a free contributor account to the site. We ask only two things when submitting news:
- Please do not copy and paste content from other news sites. We’re not asking for exclusives, but we do want to respect our colleagues in the community by not publishing the same content word-for-word. A slightly different angle or presentation is all that’s needed.
- We would appreciate the opportunity to review your post prior to submission. A2Central.com’s WordPress configuration has some unique data entry fields, and we want to ensure everything is in order for it to look as great as possible!
Like with many activities in the Apple II community, A2Central.com is volunteer-run. We do not have advertisements or a crowdfunding campaign, nor do we sell merchandise or use affiliate marketing, so there is no revenue to share with our contributors, unfortunately. But we do offer the opportunity to get your news in front of as wide an audience as possible!
Both David Schmidt and Sean McNamara have had their bylines published on our site this past year. Please drop a line if you’d like to join their ranks!
Thank you to all our readers and subscribers, whether you come to us via the Web, email, or RSS — we appreciate your support and feedback. Apple II Forever!