DefenceNet : 1 Year

On the 10th of February 2007, DefenceNet officially went online with the posting of our first article. It's been an year since then and a lot has happened during this time.

Origin

As most of you may already know, DefenceNet is a site dedicated to the revelation and discussion of news related to the military conflict between the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). When we started back in 2007, our primary objective was to create a site that centered on news on the armed conflict without false propaganda or petty politics. Initially it started out as an experiment. We didn't know where it would go and we didn't have any experience with maintaining a weblog. Above all, given the time and connectivity constraints, we weren't sure if we would actually be able to pull this off.

Growth

DefenceNet recorded an explosive growth on the number of visitors , from less than a hundred per day in Feb 2007 to several thousand unique visitors per day by 2008.

Community

As evident from the comments sections that are buzzing with activity, a great community has been built around DefenceNet. You may have noticed that usually our readers update on breaking news stories even before we do; need we say more of their activity?

Our policy on comments

• Comments involving racist remarks - We have a zero tolerance policy on comments with racist remarks. If you post such, we will have no choice but to ban you from DefenceNet.
• Comments that act as flamebait- Some users repeatedly post comments which have no basis, involve a lot of misinformation and/or fabrication, or have no relationship to the main theme of the blog; military activities in Sri Lanka. If we think that your comment falls under any of these categories, we may delete it without warning.

Your rights

DefenceNet is a blog and we use it as a platform to make our views available to the world. 

There are a number of free services that allow users to create and maintain blogs even without any technical knowledge. (Ex- Blogger, Wordpres, etc). If you find a lot of your comments getting deleted or find that your rights are being violated by our draconian laws, you have an alternative. You can create your own blog and express your views there so that you will be harassed no more by our axe of censorship. Mail us with your blog address to contact[dot]DefenceNet[at]gmail[dot]com and we will help you increase your traffic by offering a direct link to your blog from DefenceNet.

E-Mail subscriptions

This was introduced few months ago but has registered a lot of success. For those who didn't know, you can get DefenceNet posts automatically delivered right into your e-mail inbox by subscribing to this service using the widget located on the right panel. Once you enter your e-mail address in the box, a confirmation mail will be sent to the address you specified. Click on the confirmation link in the mail and you will receive new updates from that moment onwards.

RSS feeds

You can subscribe to our RSS feeds and read our posts from your feed reader. You may also use our feeds on your site/blog.

• Preview Feed and add to a feed reader or your choice.
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Mobile browsers

DefenceNet Blog can be viewed using most mobile browsers. Click here to read more information regarding this topic.

Links

If you want your site/blog to be linked up with DefenceNet, drop a mail to our mail address. If your site features content related to the conflict in Sri Lanka, we may be able to offer you a link.

Final thoughts

We would like to thank all our readers/partners for being with us throughout the year and and helping DefenceNet move forward. Your suggestions and criticism is always welcome. You may contact us through contact[dot]DefenceNet[at]gmail[dot]com or simply drop a comment. We apologize for any delay in replying as we don't always have access to Internet.

Finally we wish that there will be peace in Sri Lanka when we mark our second anniversary!