It’s been an exciting year for us here at The Hot Zone Online. So that you all might appreciate it what an amazing time of growth it’s been, here is our official recap of this year’s goings-on:

- 13 Featured Product columns published, ranging from products such as hot sauce, snacks, pepper mashes, salsas, and much more

- 37 Hot Sauce Reviews published, many thanks to our ace writers Chuk and Jon

- 23 Product Reviews published, covering the wide world of spicy food products including mustards, jerk sauces, wing sauces, snack foods, BBQ sauces, and others

- 11 Homemade Hot Sauce reviews published, none of which could have happened without the generosity and hot sauce fervor of our readers

- 7 Restaurant Reviews published, almost all of which were first-hand accounts…to our gastronomic delight

- Many more articles about all sorts of fun stuff, industry news, and much, much more

Also happening in 2006:

- Our readership has more than tripled from the end of the year 2005. We now have a daily readership of over 200 unique visitors. Not bad when you consider this humble blog was getting 5 hits a day when it started.

- Added four fantastic writers with diverse backgrounds: Chuk, Jon, Tina, and Shannan.

- Introduced our new Featured Retailers column in favor of the antiquated Retailers list we had to scrap

- Our Hot Rock for Autism charity drive raised nearly $700 through eBay auctions and private donations. Autographed & personalized bottles were donated by Michael Anthony (from Van Halen) and Bill Wharton (the Sauce Boss).

- We were flown to Hollywood to be a part of the ‘Hot Sauce Movie’ which is still in the pre-production phases, and hung out with ultra-groovy new writer Jon

- Joe filmed for a spot on Emeril Live having to do with his triumph at a local chile pepper-eating contest

- Attended ZestFest 2006 (along with fellow writer Chuk) where we shmoozed and tasted our way through an amazing weekend of fun, all while meeting some great people within the industry

- References to this site appeared a couple of times in Chile Pepper Magazine, including a quote by Joe in the most recent Hot Sauce issue

- Had a catastrophic server crash right before ZestFest which nearly resulted in the loss of 2/3 of all of our posts and site template. It re-emphasized how terrible our web-hosting service was. We are now on a new server, which has been much more stable and even more important…is free.

- Officially changed out site name & URL. We dropped the ‘blog’ from our name and /blog from the end of our URL, and we’re now officially The Hot Zone Online at http://thehotzoneonline.com

Coming in 2007:

- Many more reviews (hot sauces and others) and Featured Product writeups

- Adding at least 3 new writers, including our newest one from outside the U.S.A.

- New Autism charity drive in April/May guaranteed to far exceed our monetary success of 2006

- Brand new writeup coming in Chile Pepper magazine. It’s gonna be way cool…and that’s all we can say about it right now.

- New site features and some new ‘skins‘ for our site design for those of you who want to keep our look a little different on your home ‘puter.

- More that we can’t even anticipate…;)

The moral of the story: stay tuned and keep checking in with us to read the articles, contribute, and see how we continue to grow. Our blog is only as strong as its readers, both new and old, and you all rock! Thanks to you all!

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