3rd Anniversary – The Decorator’s Year

Another year of D&Co du Milieu has come and gone!

It was on August 12, 2016, that a peculiar novelty first graced the web: D&Co du Milieu – a website made for housing enthusiasts on LotRO created by Prunaprismia & Yao.

Today, three years later, we light another candle for this small website that has come such a long way since its creation.
Before thinking of devouring the birthday cake and thanking the guests, I suggest you take a little tour of the past year and tackle some statistics!

Contests

Blowing out this third candle is largely about remembering the 5 contests we’ve had since last year.
You know the annual program by now; it has been the same this year as it was last year: 2 Housing Week in Middle-Earth Contests, 2 « Demeure de l’Étrange » openings, and the X-Creator Contest.

Unlike I had last year, I have not had so far this year the opportunity (or the requisite time) to organize small side contests, but the year is yet far from over. Keep your eyes open for a nice new contest at the end of this month in dignified celebration of this third anniversary.

Next year the usual 5 competitions will be back (more or less in the same order and at the same times), but at least one new competition on which I am already working will be joining them.
In addition, the X-Creator contest will be back in November of this year for its third installment. If you glance at the Decorator’s Event Schedule, you will even find that every remaining month of 2019 will have its own contest.

A great year for events awaits!

Website

As could have been expected, the website has undergone some notable changes this year.

In early 2019, version 5 of the site was released and several new functionalities became available to you.
A visual facelift for the site came first, featuring some graphical changes to the homepage and the main menu. This provided an opportunity to add some features including a place to share the addresses of your homes.

This major update also allowed me to manage the site more proficiently and with, I hope, more fluidity!

The beginning of this year also marked the launch of the LotRO Housing Discord server, or, the Decorator's Discord. The server now has about fifty members, and it is always a pleasure to share with you there ideas and news about our favorite game’s housing system.

Finally, atop the sweeping changes of the big update came version 5.1, which added to the site a way to display all decorations/posts on a single page.

For this coming year, I am working on an update that will introduce a more advanced search form.

⇒ Discover here the latest updates to the website.

Database

D&Co du Milieu would not be what it is now without its famous decoration database.

I promised to add ambient music to the website last year, and now all available themes are in the database alongside their full soundtracks.

Today, the database has exactly 1164 decoration items (out of 1188 extant), and I continue to strive as usual to populate it as best as I can.
This year will have been the year during which I spent the most time of any updating this database, whether by posting new decorations or updating old pictures and adding information (about price, binding, etc...) to existing entries.

The work on the database will continue apace!

⇒ Discover here the latest updates to the database.

Let’s move on to the numbers!

Visits:

• 138 000 visits on D&Co this year (x1.6 compared to the previous year)
• 18 000 visits in July this year (Housing Week effect), a new record!

The most visited “News” (French + English):

• Housing Week in Middle-Earth #7 : The Final Fifteen ! (2500 visits)
• Decorators’ Events Schedule (2400 visits)
• Guide : An Introduction to LotRO Housing (2200 visits)

The most viewed decoration items (French + English):

• Fish Pond (841 visits)
• Moria Welcome Mat (829 views)
• Hollin Gate Wall Engraving (778 views)

It is also interesting to see that the most visited categories are those that are least represented ingame (special furniture, ceiling and enormous yard …).

My main suppliers* of visitors (French + English):
* 30% of total visits

• Lotro.com: 65% of my external visits come from the official web site.
• FibroJedi (blog): 19%, thanks to Fibro for sharing this blog!
• Twitter / Facebook: 12%, many thanks to all of you social media followers!
• LesFuretsDuGondor + LotRO JeuxOnLine: 3%. A big thank you to you, Khalès & Edward!

2018/2019 Contests:

• 5 contests this year (X²-Creator + 2 Housing Week Contests + 2 “Demeures de l’Étrange”)
• More than 180 participants
• 16 500 LotRO Points distributed
• 13 Best House trophies distributed this year!

Thank You!

Finally, I wanted to thank all the people who continue to help this website thrive, including all the visitors, commenters, contest participants, and people who share the work done here. A huge thank you to you all!

Thanks to the entire team at SSG and especially Cordovan, OliveYew, and RedPanda for their help and support.
Thanks to Rhuangar and Haflith for their invaluable help in translating complex posts for D&Co.
Finally, thanks to Pruna, Edward, Kaels, Druidsfire, and FibroJedi for accompanying me in judging the various competitions!

Thanks everyone and Happy Birthday to D&Co du Milieu!

~Yao
D&Co du Milieu