The wall above my screen at The Ramen Rater HQ
Right now, I’m at number 996 and going to pause. I will start reviewing again on Sunday, March 10th 2013. Why? Well, I figured I’d give myself a birthday present. #997 on Sunday, #998 on Monday and #999 will be on Tuesday. #1,000 will be reviewed and videotaped on Wednesday and posted on Thursday, which is my birthday!
I think I should also mention some other things. First off, the site has moved! The Ramen Rater is now hosted at WPEngine instead of at WordPress.com. This allows for a lot more flexibility and configurability of the site. I’m sure you’ve noticed the advertisements for The Ramen Rater Store. What we’re hoping is that these spaces will be purchased by instant noodle companies and other entities such as grocery stores. The Ramen Rater is a place where people from the world over congregate to get information and find out about instant noodles – I think there is a serious value in that.
With the move, those of you who have followed the site via WordPress.com in the past will have to follow now via the link on the bottom of the right hand column – you’ll see it right underneath the RSS feeds.
Another big change is that The Big List is now not only sortable but it has links! You can peruse the list online, sorting by brand, country of origin, rating, variety and what kind of package it’s in. Go have a look!
Yet another big change is that now every single review has been edited. I went through every single image and resized, watermarked and basically made it so everything looks nice and loads much faster than it used to. Let me tell you – resizing and editing over 6500 images took quite a while! A major reason for this was for the mobile crowd. I’ve partnered with a fellow from Oregon who has made most of the changes around here possible. He’s working hard behind the scenes and is responsible for the sortable Big List and pretty much how everything looks here!
Android users: in the future, there will be a The Ramen Rater app! The app is currently in beta but I will let everyone know of it’s progress and happily announce its completion at the right time. Some features we hope to implement will be search via UPC code (yep – scan a pack at the store and it’ll pop up on your mobile device!) amongst other things.
Well, that’s it until Sunday. I want as always to thank everyone for reading the blog, your great comments and sending donations and samples to review – without you, the blog would be quite boring. Big thanks to Dave J. who has invested a lot of time, effort and money into getting this site looking so nice! Finally, an enormous thank you to my lovely wife who puts up with my crazy instant noodle obsession and antics. I love you, Kit!
The countdown to #1,000 starts Sunday!
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