I came across something recently that has me puzzled. It has to do with stats, something I don’t look at too often.
This next image is a screen capture from today’s Jetpack Stats. It’s the numbers for the last seven days and the weekly numbers,
Blog Stuff
The evolution of my avatar (or Gravatar) has its roots way back when in the heady pre-WordPress days. […]
Well, that’s not true; I’m sure there will be additional consecutive posts, but not deliberately.
“What the heck are you talking about!?”
This is the 61st consecutive day that I’ve published something. To be clear, a blog post, and not a book. I remain — explicably — unpublished.
I should explain . . . WordPress does this thing where once you have a few days in a row that you post something, it sends you a congratulatory acknowledgment. At first, I wasn’t trying, but once it got to a few weeks, it had become a habit. More than a habit, actually; I was addicted.
OK, so addicted is a little strong . . .
I don’t look at my stats much because — as mentioned before — they can be skewed by many things. Views can be skewed by having a gallery in the post, and visitor numbers can be skewed by back-and-forth comments between two people. Meaning, two people conversing over the course of a day would show up as multiple visitors (as far as I know, the system doesn’t check for unique visitors on any given day — or ever).
There are widgets that will give you better stats. I have one on my sidebar, but, as I said, it don’t matter none since the only person with any possible interest in the number of visitors during the recent past is me, and I’m not invested as much as some.
But, I am casually interested in another metric . . .
It would be nice filling-in that world map. Having said that, I got to thinking about how many countries I’m missing.
The first post of this blog went online (HERE).
Twelve years later, I’m amazed how prescient I was . . . I’m still my number-one fan, and I still enjoy reading my old stuff (someone has to).
My second post is an opinion piece . . . yup! I set the tone early (HERE). Now, since it was the second post in a new blog, I had no expectations for much traffic . . . and my low expectations proved correct. What I didn’t realize at the time, is that all my opinion pieces would enjoy near anonymity.
Of course, it wasn’t just my opinion pieces . . .
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WordPress has been blowing its trumpet regarding the new Full Site Editor. Who knew they were Trumpers!? What? Oh . . . trumpeters. Right.
Readers might remember I gave up my beloved 2010 Theme because of the Block Editor’s (Ptui!) requirements. Actually, I was lied to tricked into switching, but, OK.
I don’t mind the current theme too much, but it has a few things I don’t like. I’m told I could wrestle it into Disperser Compliance by CSSing to death, but whenever I try something, I run up against the limitations of the theme (I had chosen this theme from of the themes that WP said were block-compliant — but that was more Fake News).
The point is, I was curious about this much-vaulted FSE thing, and, as it so happens, I have blogs I had created at a time when I thought I might split the main blog into three separate blogs; a Photography blog, a Writing blog, and a Whatever-else blog.
In case anyone is wondering what happened, I did migrate all the obvious posts into the appropriate blogs, BUT . . . I tend to mix photos with opinions, fiction with reviews, and, to make a short story long, it was a mess. So, I stuck with the one blog . . . this blog.
Anyway, back to FSE . . . I took some hours I didn’t have and invested them in playing with FSE. Once I thought I got the gist of it, I picked the photography blog, changed the layout to the Twenty-Twentytwo Theme, and set about editing it. It’s worth saying that it’s a Beta editor, so don’t expect too much from it, regardless of what WP says.
So, how did I do? Well, read on if you’re interested (99% of the people won’t be, so, once again, this is for my future me to enjoy). To be clear, this won’t be of interest to anyone other than someone who has a blog and is thinking about trying FSE.
These summaries always stall when we get to the fourth quarter . . . I mean, that was just a few weeks ago, right?
Well, here’s the thing . . . it’s a few weeks ago for regular readers, but digital media archeologists hundreds, if not thousands, of years from now, probably won’t have the time to sift through three months’ worth of posts and likely will appreciate this summary.
I mean, do you know how much content they’ll have to sort through? Well, let me tell you, but first, a photo . . . a photo from one of the first non-reminder posts of the quarter<<link . . .
Anyway, the number of 2020 tweets future digital archeologists will be confronted with? … roughly 200 billion tweets (an average of 6,000 tweets per second) . . . think your tweet will go viral? The odds are not good.
What about Facebook? … well, as of October, 2020, there are 3.21 active Facebook users. Sure, a billion of those are probably Russian and Chinese bots making sure we stay mad at each other, but that still leaves 2.21 billion users sharing all manner of dubious information and pet photos . . . daily.
What about blog posts? … here are the (depressing to bloggers) statistics (LINK). . .
The Alphabet Challenge<<link stories and the reminders to vote once again made up the bulk of posts for July, August, and September. Note: that search result is just for the stories (in reverse order). If you want the results, click this LINK.
By July, I had (mostly) shaken my habit of mentioning COVID-19 and concentrated on writing reminders to vote for stories. It wasn’t until the middle of the month that I wrote something else . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Again, I’ll begin with photos . . .
This masked opportunist gave me the first set of photos of the Third Quarter. Side note: you can use the calendar option on the sidebar to see all of the posts for a given month or individual dates.
The Alphabet Challenge<<link stories and the reminders to vote continued — and will continue as we go forward — to contribute the bulk of the blogging content. Note: that search result is just for the stories (in reverse order). If you want the results, click this LINK.
I had erroneously mentioned on my previous update that in March I had pretty much given up writing about COVID-19 and related stuff. Well, I must have shut a lot of it out of my mind because April 2020 saw many posts relating to COVID-19 and associate issues. This LINK brings up all the posts where I mention COVID-19, even if only in passing. But, to be sure, there are many posts (too many) dealing with masks, social distancing, statistics, bat-shit theories, misinformation, disinformation, etc. etc. . I’m posting it here because I really don’t want to keep mentioning it as I go forward. If interested in revisiting what was on my mind about COVID-19 in April, May, and June, knock yourselves out.
So, was there anything NOT involving COVID-19 and the Alphabet Challenge? A few things, but I’ll begin with photos . . .
Once again, the bulk of the photos come from the ‘reminder to vote’ posts. A few exceptions are covered below, but the short reminder posts with a few photos each pushed my photo processing along.
From the previous year-end update, it should be obvious to everyone that — by volume — the big contribution for the year has been from The Alphabet Challenge<<link stories. Note: that search result is just for the stories (in reverse order). If you want the results, click this LINK.
The Alphabet Challenge disproportionally contributed both directly and indirectly because not only were there five posts relating to it every few weeks (three stories, one voting post, one results post for each round) but I also had daily reminders during the rounds.
I’ll mention some exceptions below, but The Alphabet Challenge also dominated in contributing photos. It’s tough picking a favorite from the first quarter’s reminders . . . but it’s easier picking one for each month’s reminders, starting with January’s . . .
The photo I liked best for January is this, from the Orphans<<link posts. . .
This year has been something, I tell you what. So much so that I decided on a bit of a year-end summary.
A summary of my blogging efforts, my life, what I observed and think about the year, and whatever else comes up as I write these posts. That’s right . . . posts, because it would be difficult — and draining — to write about all those things in one post.
Therefore, I begin with is by far the easiest thing to write about . . . numbers. Specifically, numbers pertaining to this blog, and more specifically, numbers for the year and numbers for the ten years this blog has been in existence.
Here we go . . .
The big jump in visitors and views for 2020 is due to The Alphabet Challenge (LINK), as can be seen below.
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