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Site Stuff: Help us celebrate! ☕

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Way back in 2015. - DKPS

We've come a really long way since this first-year anniversary, pictured above.

I am beyond excited and proud that on July 23, DKPittsburghSports.com will turn five years old. Five amazing, painful, exhilarating, wouldn’t-trade-them-for-anything years.

And of course, there could be nobody better to celebrate with than you, who made it all possible. Our staff invites you to join us at our office at Highmark Stadium, on Tuesday, July 23 at 6 p.m. Here is the Facebook event Taylor Haase made for us.

I can't wait o see some of you again, and meet new faces. It blows my mind how many amazing people I have met in the past five years. Different people from all walks of life, from all over the world, all brought together by the intense passion for Pittsburgh sports. A bond that took me many years to understand. If you aren't born in Pittsburgh, it just makes no sense. It made no sense why the entire season-ticket Row A, Section 216 of Three Rivers Stadium, felt like my family. Man, I still miss “the Heckler.” (A mailman in Bloomfield who really earned that name every night.)

So rather than decide ourselves how to spend this very special evening, let’s do what we always do and ask for your input: How would you like to celebrate?

Let me know in comments, and I will do my best to make it happen.

MORE EYEBALLS

As we approach that fifth anniversary, it'd be nice to think most sports fans in the market have heard of us. But it's also cautionary to think they might have. Because, at some point, they'd likely have decided whether or not to subscribe ... sight unseen.

Or, uh, site unseen.

Because we spent the better part of our existence behind a rock-solid wall, we'd need word of mouth or small samples to show what was going on in here. But now, with two recent initiatives --the 99-cent one-month trial and, just in the past month, free straight news content -- we're hoping more new people will at least get a peek and want more.

So far, it's really worked:

• For this month, June 2019, Google Analytics has tracked 240,739 users as having visited our site in some form. In June 2018, that figure was 116,770. That's more than double!

• New users -- people who'd never previously visited our site once -- are at 170,116 for the month. That's the biggest such number we've ever had.

• Our outside referral traffic had been insanely reliant on Twitter -- 46.6 percent -- and, with Twitter's ongoing decline, that wasn't a safe place to be. This year, our Twitter referrals now comprise only 34.0 percent, compared to big increases for Facebook -- almost even with Twitter now at 31.6 percent -- as well as Google searches, Google News and other outlets that now share our links.

Not everyone who checks us out will subscribe. Maybe only 1 or 2 percent will. But the best way to raise one number is to raise the other. -- DK

GROWING WITH WPXI

There's a new weekly program called 'Halftime Adjustments.' It's available online and on your smart TV, too, if you download the new WPXI Now app. Here's the second episode from this past Wednesday, with Alby Oxenreiter and me discussing a bunch of Steelers/Penguins/Pirates topics for a half-hour:

There's also an expanded content-sharing arrangement in the works, one in which some of our free material -- almost always straight news -- will be available on their sports page. They'll still have to come here for the full article, so it's a win-win in that we'll bring new eyeballs here from one of the city's busiest websites. The possibilities are endless, really, and our minds collectively start swirling all over when we get to talking. But, as ever -- and I remind of this a lot -- we're 100 percent independent. -- DK

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