METEOTEMPLATE N E W S L E T T E R IT SEEMS ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE TO ME, BUT YES, TODAY, METEOTEMPLATE IS. 18 Jul 2016 SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

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1 18 Jul 2016 SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE METEOTEMPLATE N E W S L E T T E R IT SEEMS ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE TO ME, BUT YES, TODAY, METEOTEMPLATE IS CELEBRATING ITS FIRST BIRTHDAY. ON JULY 18, 2015, THE FIRST NON-BETA VERSION WAS OFFICIALLY RELEASED. IN THIS ISSUE LET S HAVE A LOOK AT SOME INTERESTING FACTS AND HOW THINGS CHANGED. NEXT WEEK THERE WILL BE A NORMAL NEWSLETTER WHICH WILL COVER NEW THINGS FROM LAST WEEK AS WELL.

2 THE IDEA FOR CREATING A NEW WEBSITE TEMPLATE FOR WEBSITES PRESENTING INFORMATION FROM PERSONAL WEATHER STATIONS FIRST OCCURRED TO ME SOMETIME IN FEBRUARY ABOUT HALF A YEAR BEFORE THAT I STARTED CREATING MY OWN WEBPAGE, BACK THEN CALLED METEOPAGE, WHICH SOME OTHER PEOPLE SAW AND ASKED ME: WHICH TEMPLATE DO YOU USE. MY ANSWER WAS NO TEMPLATE. BUT I BEGAN THINKING ABOUT MAKING ONE SINCE MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WERE INTERESTED IN USING PARTS OF THE CODE. THIS MEANT BASICALLY REWRITING THE CODE FROM SCRATCH, BUT SINCE I BASICALLY STARTED WITH HTML AND PHP THAT HALF A YEAR AGO, EVEN AFTER THAT FIRST HALF YEAR, I KNEW I WOULD DO MANY THINGS DIFFERENTLY, SO LOOKING BACK IT WAS A GOOD DECISION TO LOOK AT THE CODE AGAIN. IN MAY 2015 I BEGAN SENDING FIRST VERSIONS OF PAGES TO PEOPLE WHO OFFERED HELP IN A FORM OF TESTING. THEN BY THE END OF JUNE, THE VERY FIRST VERSION WAS READY AND AFTER IT WAS CONFIRMED TO ME THAT IT WORKS (THOUGH TO MY CURRENT STANDARDS IT DID NOT BUT.) I CREATED THE BLOG AND RELEASED THE VERY FIRST VERSION OF METEOTEMPLATE, BACK THEN WITHOUT ANY CODENAME, WHICH CAME LATER AS AN UPDATE (METEOTEMPLATE 1.2 STRAWBERRY). THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE INSTALLED THE TEMPLATE AFTER CHRISTMAS, WILL PROBABLY BE QUITE SURPRISED WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE AT THE BEGINNING. THE CONCEPT OF BLOCKS WAS ONLY INTRODUCED IN VERSION 3, AND BEFORE THAT, THE HOMEPAGE WAS PROBABLY THE WEAKEST PART OF IT, SHOWING ONLY A SIMPLE FORECAST, SIMPLE STATION DATA SUMMARY AND A HUGE, USUALLY USELESS IMAGE. AND BECAUSE YOU ALL KNOW ALREADY I QUITE LIKE NUMBERS AND STATISTICS, THIS SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE NEWSLETTER WILL INCLUDE SOME BEHIND-THE-SCENES STATISTICS ABOUT THE TEMPLATE AND HOW THINGS WORK IN THE BACKEND JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

3 VERSION SUMMARY 0.1 BETA JUN 29, JUL 18, JUL 25, STRAWBERRY AUG 18, WATER MELON SEP 12, SOUR CHERRY DEC 21, BLACK CHERRY JAN 4, MANGO JAN 23, KIWI MAR 28, BLUEBERRY APR 9, POMEGRANATE JUN 23, JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

4 201 METEOTEMPLATE USERS As of July 17, 2016, Meteotemplate has 201 KNOWN USERS, some of which might not be using the template any more, while there might be some I don t even know about. The vast majority of users are from the North America and Europe, however, there is now AT LEAST ONE USER ON EACH CONTINENT, with the exception of Antarctica (if you happen to know anyone living there, let me know ) Norway (7), Germany (7), Netherlands (6), Greece (6), Denmark (5), Belgium (3), Switzerland (3), Finland (3), Hungary (2), Poland (2), Austria (2), South Africa (2), Portugal (2), Isle of Man (1), Thailand (1), Slovenia (1), Iraq (1), Serbia (1), New Zealand (1), Sweden (1), Slovakia (1), Suriname (1) JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

5 What else can be said about you? Well, 47% of you use the Davis Pro 2 station, 7% use the Davis Vantage Vue and 6% use the Oregon WMR200. Other stations used by the users include for example the Fine Offset range of stations, Acurite 5in1, NetAtmo, AcuRite, Oregon WMR180, Raspberry Pi, Peet Bros, Nexus, WeatherHawk and many more. Davis Pro 2 (Plus) 47 % Davis Vantage Vue 8% Oregon WMR 200 6% METEOTEMPLATE.COM VISITORS It is also interesting to look at the visitors to Meteotemplate.com. The following map shows you the overall visits to Meteotemplate.com since it was released: Almost 20% of all visits to Meteotemplate.com are from the United States, if however, we look at the same statistic based on continents, than Europe has the most, with almost two thirds of all visits. Break down by subcontinents shows 24.5% visitors from Northern America, 23% from Western Europe, 17% from Eastern Europe, 15.6% from Southern Europe, 10% from Northern Europe and 3% from Australasia JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

6 53 % 27 % 8 % 6 % 3 % 1 % 0.5 % 70 % 10 % 7 % 6 % 87 % 8 % 5 % One interesting metric is the total number of visits. THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF VISITS TO METEOTEMPLATE.COM IN JULY 2015 WAS LESS THAN 8% OF CURRENT VALUE, during Christmas 2015 it was about one third of current total. What is interesting is that the number rises each month and that there is always a jump whenever a new version is released, after which the increased level remains. Major jumps were during Christmas with the introduction of the new version 3 and the concept of blocks. Another one was then in June when version 6 was released. Overall, 77% OF METEOTEMPLATE.COM VISITORS HAVE COME BACK TO THE SITE AT LEAST ONE MORE TIME ON A DIFFERENT DAY. In July 2015, searching weather template showed Meteotemplate on page 26, as of July 2016, Meteotemplate is on the first page, search result number two. Meteotemplate.com also underwent a MAJOR REDESIGN that made the whole site more responsive, easier to navigate and better fitting the current state of the template JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

7 This is something that would NEVER BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT YOU the users. Meteotemplate is now available in 17 LANGUAGES and I have added OVER 18 THOUSAND LANGUAGE STRINGS! Over 30 OF YOU HAVE SUBMITTED TRANSLATED STRINGS, THANK YOU!!! METEOTEMPLATE IN NUMBERS Total number of downloads Template downloads 2543 Template updates 914 Most popular blocks 1. Current Conditions 2. Station Data 3. Forecast 4. Gauges 5. Sun rise /sun set, Interactive Graph Most popular plugins 1. Stickers 2. Earthquakes 3. Annual Normals 4. Eclipses 5. City Conditions Most visited pages 1. Meteotemplate.com homepage 2. Meteotemplate plugins 3. Meteotemplate downloads 4. Meteotemplate Blocks 5. Meteotemplate Blog JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

8 Available blocks 92 Available plugins 83 Core template files 52 MB Translated strings over 18 thousand Google Search Results result 266 (July 2015) weather template result 2 (July 2016) weather website template result 244 (July 2015) result 1 (July 2016) result N/A (July 2015) free website template result 54 (July 2016) overall marketing expenses $0 number of ads on Meteotemplate.com 0 Main development SW Notepad++ - all code Filezilla FTP Libre Office Writer blog posts, newsletter Libre Office Calc GIMP Linux Lubuntu Wordpress blog Skype support Gmail, GCalendar, GDocs, GDrive, - yes you probably see I like Google products ;) Development browser Google Chrome Browsers tested Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, Maxthon, Opera, Vivaldi, Nitro HW used PWS: FineOffset WH1080 Data upload: Meteobridge Standard PC: Acer Extensa GB RAM, 1.73GHz Dual-Core, 60GB HDD Mobile device: mobiletest.com online emulator SUPPORT ONE THING I TAKE VERY SERIOUSLY IS PROVIDING USEFUL SUPPORT, which in my opinion should be offered WITHIN 24 HOURS (or at least the user should be informed their message has been received and some approximate time when it will be dealt with). I try to provide support via VARIOUS CHANNELS, including 3 forums, the blog, Facebook, (primary channel), Skype, Google Hangouts. Looking back over the past year, since I put all Meteotemplate related stuff into a separate folder in my account I can see JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

9 I have received s, replied to 8653 of them and what I am most proud of is that 99.38% of s were replied to within that 24 hour period (obviously I have a normal job so going lower than that would be problematic, one other interesting fact is that 85% of development and support was done between 11PM and 5AM It is funny when I now look at what the template looked like a year ago not just the template as such (for which I now feel quite embarrassed ), but SO MANY THINGS CHANGED the translation system, the blocks, the wiki, the whole page, the download system, the menu system, the blog, GUI setup vs direct edits in code ON ONE HAND I DO UNDERSTAND IT IS NOT ALWAYS EASY ESPECIALLY FOR YOU GUYS HAVING TO GET USED TO NEW THINGS ALL THE TIME. ON THE OTHER HAND, as I always emphasized, I have absolutely no IT background or education and as a completely self-taught hobbyist I am learning all the time and as you can imagine, if you see things can be done much more efficiently IT IS HARD TO RESIST TO KEEP THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE. QUITE OFTEN I RUN INTO SITUATION WHERE I KNOW HOW TO DO SOMETHING BETTER, but I have to wait for some extra time before I learn how to implement the change into the current system of things, while keeping the change as smooth as possible for you as users. While doing this, however, I DID NOT LEARN JUST CODING. I GOT TO KNOW SO MANY PEOPLE FROM SO MANY DIFFERENT CULTURES, TALKED TO MANY OF YOU DIRECTLY ON SKYPE, LEARNED A LOT ALSO FROM GEOGRAPHY given I spent quite some time staring at maps (and maybe some of you now know that somewhere in the middle of Europe, there is a country called the Czech Republic :D), IMPROVED MY ENGLISH, which is obviously not my first language, and one thing I would never expect is that Meteotemplate development has actually HELPED ME EVEN IN MY NORMAL EVERYDAY JOB AND DURING PHD EXAMS! Yes I am also learning things from meteorology while I develop some particular plugins and this knowledge was very useful to me, not to mention that one always remembers things much better when they are enjoying yourself, I cannot otherwise imagine I would for example ever learn all the climate zones ;) In contrast, THERE ARE THINGS THAT DID NOT CHANGE Meteotemplate is STILL COMPLETELY FREE AND WITHOUT ANY ADS. It is still offered as a core template file with additional plugins, which are released and developed separately. Since I have asthma, live in a one-room flat in the middle of a big city and usually do not come home before 11PM, it would be problematic for me to have a pet, so I sometimes say my WH1080 is like my pet :D It might not be the best station out there, but it provides data for testing purposes, for the Meteotemplate demo page and it does that quite well. Interestingly, the hardware and software I use also didn t change very much. The only thing I have not used before was Wordpress for the blog and probably the only other change I made in terms of the SW I use is that I switched to Libre Office from Open Office JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM

10 WHAT IS NEXT. You might be asking now, so what is next. Well I can tell you that right now I AM VERY INTENSIVELY WORKING ON THE NEXT VERSION. I can also tell you that it will be version 8.0 (don t laugh. it is not always that obvious that 8 will follow 7 and who knows if version 8 will not be followed by 10 :D :D :D). What will this version bring? I have already mentioned this, this version will be one of versions with most changes if not one with most changes overall! But do not worry, I can also tell you that you will be VERY POSITIVELY SURPRISED, the UPDATE WILL BE SIMPLE AND IT WILL BRING SOME COMPLETELY NEW POSSIBILITIES OF DOING THINGS MAKING LIFE EASIER TO ESPECIALLY YOU AS A WEBMASTER. Changes will be mostly in the backend. I cannot tell right now when it will be available, but it will definitely be within the next month. It also already has a name ;-) That however is something I always keep just to myself until it is released, not telling even the testers who get files still labeled with the old version LAST, BUT NOT LEAST I WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL OF YOU NOT JUST USERS, BUT THERE WERE MANY OTHERS WHO DO NOT USE THE TEMPLATE, BUT OFFERED SUPPORT BY GIVING SUGGESTIONS, PROVIDING FEEDBACK AND EVEN PROVIDING SUPPORT TO OTHER USERS. Without this Meteotemplate would never get to where it is now. This is what motivates me to continue and ensures me what I am doing actually makes sense. I will not name anyone in particular because there were so many people I was in touch with and it would be hard to choose who helped more and who helped less and I am 100% sure I would later on realize I forgot someone very important. I am sure you guys know who you are I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THANK THOSE OF YOU WHO SUPPORTED MY FINANCIALLY. I make no distinction between who does or does not donate as I am fully aware of the fact we all have different possibilities and what I look at much more is the attitude of that person. However, it is true that without this, Meteotemplate would not be possible. My goal was never to make money, but in the meantime, I do need to cover the costs because I cannot afford paying this all by myself. Higher traffic means higher demands and that is also reflected in the costs. So once again thanks to all of you that helped in this way too. And LET S HOPE THERE IS ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL YEAR AHEAD OF US IN TERMS OF NOT JUST METEOTEMPLATE AND THAT IN A YEARS TIME, THERE WILL BE ANOTHER NEWSLETTER CELEBRATING THE SECOND TEMPLATE ANNIVERSARY JACHYMCZ@GMAIL.COM