Rhonda Bracey: At Random

WordPress.com compiled a summary report of this blog’s stats for 2011. It’s here: https://sandgroper14.wordpress.com/2011/annual-report/

I like that the number of visitors to this blog would have filled the Sydney Opera House 19 times over 😉

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 50,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 80 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 756 posts. There were 182 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 70mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 3rd with 228 views. The most popular post that day was The *best* Blueberry Muffin recipe.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were whateye8.com, quiltinggallery.com, search.aol.com, search.conduit.com, and moje.dama.cz.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for blueberry muffin recipe, meshwork, blueberry muffin recipe frozen blueberries, blueberry muffins, and blueberry muffins recipe.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

The *best* Blueberry Muffin recipe July 2006
91 comments

Fake names for documentation April 2007
5 comments

IE min-height issue solved May 2007
14 comments

Japanese Meshwork September 2008
5 comments

Cleaning fusible glue off a Teflon coated iron July 2009
1 comment

O.M.G. I received an email this morning from the blogged.com people telling me that their editorial staff have rated this personal blog at 8.5, which is “Great”. I went in to the list of personal blogs and found this blog at #70 of some 12,000 blogs. How cool is that!

But what was most interesting was that I was one ‘ahead’ of Molly e. Holzschlag’s blog. Those in the HTML/CSS world are probably very aware of Molly, who has written several books and spoken at numerous conferences and is an all-round guru in her field. In fact, I even have at least one of her books: The Zen of CSS Design.

The cynic me says what are these ratings for—just an ego trip? But what the hell. I was pleased to get the rating and being listed on the fourth page of Blogged.com has increased my stats markedly for today.

BTW, you can click the button on the sidebar to add your own ranking of this blog.

Oh, and the editorial ranking? Here’s what the email said: “We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style. After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.5 score (out of 10).”

I’ve passed the 20,000 ‘page views’ mark for this blog! So it’s time to provide some stats:

• Started: March 2006
• Posts written: 256
• Comments received: 211
• Total views: 20,618
• Most views on a day: 270
• Spam comments received and deleted: 5,390
• Most popular post: The *best* blueberry muffin recipe, with some 14,723 page views!

Stats for The *Best* Blueberry Muffin Recipe post

Page views by month since March 2006

WordPress added a new feature for their bloggers—an option to preview how your blog would look with a different theme, without changing how your readers see it. So I tested out some options, and chose this theme. I added a picture of the Blackwood River that I took back in June to the header.

I like the new look. But what do you think?

OMG! I got a pingback to my blog post yesterday about the Skype issues—from the “Blog of the Day” at WordPress.com. I’m listed as #98 in their top 100 posts for August 18, 2007.

To put that into perspective: In July 2007, there were some 2 million posts on WordPress blogs. If WordPress picks 100 posts per day, and there’s 31 days in August, that means that of those 2 million posts, only 3100 get picked as “BOTD” posts. Which is about 0.1%.

Who’da thought??

A friend in Connecticut sent me a link to this article on Twitter today. I have to say I agree! I can ‘get’ websites, blogs, instant messaging (IM), but I just don’t ‘get’ Twitter. Like, what’s the point?

I particularly liked these sentences:

“There’s no blaming Generation Y for that. Blame their parents, those touchy-feely post boomers who piled on the praise and positive reinforcement, lest they bruise little Dylan or Madison’s budding self esteem. It’s Mom and Dad who awarded gold stars and iMacs every time their precious progeny engaged in the most mundane of child development.”

I’m going to let Twitter pass me by… which just confirms that I must be getting old and grumpy! *grin*

Update: December 2007: Well, it’s not just me! Pamela Slim, over at Escape from Cubicle Nation doesn’t see the point either. I’m in good company. I’m also not convinced about the value of the Facebook’s “What are you doing now?” status thing. I only joined Facebook to play Scrabble with a friend, and haven’t got in to *why* I should use the stuff that’s there to broadcast my every moment. Both also assume I’m online every waking moment, and I’m not.

Ever wondered what those little orange buttons or RSS links are for that you see on many websites these days (including this blog)? Well, if you haven’t figured it out, or no-one’s told you how they work and how to use them, skip on over to Commoncraft and take a look at a very simple, “aha!” 3.5 minute explanation.

I particularly like the non-PowerPoint presentation!