It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone. It seems like 2009 blew right past me. I don’t even want to think about how many hours I spent posting updates, writing endless lines of PHP and CSS, and trying desperately to stay on top of emails. That number is probably in the high hundreds, to be honest.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s been fun. However, running What The Christ? and keeping the rest of my life in order has been a challenge, to say the least. The site’s core audience grew exponentially this year, forcing me to face administration issues that I never thought I would have to deal with when I unleashed this beast on the web 15 months ago. The site was so popular at one point that I almost had to switch service providers for fear of being charged a small fortune in bandwidth overages.

I don’t foresee that slowing down in 2010, either. Page views have doubled in the past two months alone and we have days where more than 15,000 unique visitors hit the site. We’ve been discussing switching to a fully dedicated server solution to handle the load increases.

Yes, 2010 is going to be a huge year for WTC.

…and that’s exactly why I’m going to step down as the owner and administrator sometime in January or February.

No, that’s not a joke. I’m calling it quits. Moving on. Riding into the sunset. The truth is that I never expected this website to last as long as it has and with everything that I have coming down the pipe in my personal life this year (a kid being one of them), I’m just not the right person to be in charge anymore. I started this website as a small, fun side project and it’s simply snowballed into more than I really have time to properly manage.

With that said, I think it’s only fair that I share my plan with you, the people who have made this site as popular as it is today. Rest assured that I’m not closing the site. My aim right now is to sell it to someone who wants to keep WTC alive and continue to foster its growth. There’s a lot of fun to be had and money to be made on a website as popular as this one. I refuse to simply shut the doors and dump all of my hard work. I already have a few leads on potential buyers but if you’re (seriously) interested in discussing purchasing the site, then please feel free to contact me. I’d be happy to share information about income, analytic data, and anything else related to the site that you may want to know as a potential buyer.

That’s about all for right now. You shouldn’t notice anything unusual leading up to my departure. Things may shake up a bit once I’m gone but my guess is that the new owner – whoever that turns out to be – will be just as dedicated to keeping you all coming back daily as I’ve been.

Feel free to tell me how much you love me or hate me in the comments. Ask questions, too. I’m sure that there are at least a few hanging out there.