A short announcement attached to this year’s blog review post.
Move off of WP.com to DreamHost
I posted a while back about moving off of WordPress.com, and I’ve finally done the official switch over.
It took a while to get the domain transferred, and then it was close enough to the end of the year that I decided to wait so my stats would cut over from the WP.com site in 2024 to the new one in 2025.
In moving, I also made a small number of changes:
- Subscribers list: I ran the list of emails through a marketing list service, mostly to weed out any that weren’t valid or undeliverable. Most of the emails were transferred over though.
- Comments: have been disabled. Most of the comments I’ve received have been through social media, and it cuts down on possible avenues of spam.
- Email forwarding: was set up on WP.com, but obviously with moving the domain that’s now on DreamHost.
So, that’s it. The move is finally done.
I intend to keep my WP.com account and site, though I plan to make the site private in a day or two once I’m certain DNS propagation is complete.
Posts
Now on to blog stats!
Only 8 posts this year, so also a big drop in words with only 10,323 for an average of 1,290 per post; compared to last year’s 17 posts and about 33,000 words.
My reflection posts this year have had fewer views than I expected with the earlier reflection post at 134 views. Though I say that, the post got more views than some of the past reflections (see below). The Alternatives for WP.com one got 210, which is decent. The main thing was that some of my readers found it useful. Hurray!
All time stats
Over the last 15 years, it’s no surprise that the most practical, tutorial-style posts for popular topics have garnered the most views, especially having been on the site for many years.
I am surprised by:
- the Open Source ILS report is in the top 5. It’s a fairly niche topic and only covered the circ module, and they’re old versions.
- the Tracking your work one is in the top 10 with 4960 views, almost 5000! I’ve had it up for less than 2 years. The next most viewed post since 2016 is the most viewed reflection post (see below). Makes me wish we could still see the search terms people used to end up on the site.
I thought it interesting that my reflection posts ended up in this order (ascending):
| Title | Views |
|---|---|
| Reflection: The first half of my seventh year at GitLab and digging into Strategy & Operations | 35 |
| A Reflection on Two Years as Content Coordinator | 66 |
| Reflection: The last third of my fifth year at GitLab and expanding Staff Support Engineer | 67 |
| Reflection: First half of my fourth year at GitLab and getting more involved | 80 |
| Reflection: First third of my fifth year at GitLab and defining Staff Support Engineer | 113 |
| Reflection: Second half of my fourth year at GitLab and becoming Staff | 118 |
| Reflection: The first half of my sixth year at GitLab: helping other (Support Engineers) and leaving Support | 119 |
| Reflection: 18 months as a Manager of Technology and Technical Services | 126 |
| GitLab Summit 2018 & Contribute 2019: Reflection | 132 |
| Reflection: A Year as an Accessibility Librarian | 133 |
| Reflection: The second half of my sixth year at GitLab and learning Strategy & Operations | 134 |
| Reflection Part 2: My second year at GitLab and on becoming Senior again | 168 |
| Reflection: My third year at GitLab and becoming a non-manager leader | 233 |
| Reflection Part 1: My first year at GitLab and becoming Senior | 374 |
| Reflection on my CEO shadow rotation at GitLab | 433 |
| Reflection: Acting Chief of Staff to CTO at GitLab | 504 |
| Learning to be a Systems Administrator for Horizon ILS | 559 |
Based on views and engagement, maybe I should go back to posting only once a year instead of every 6 months. I already did the first half of year 7, so if I decide to do it that way, it’ll have to wait until year 8! Though, I’m fairly certain that the posts with more views simply have more compelling titles.
Views and visitors
A significant increase in views and visitors, I assume mostly from the popularity of the “Tracking your work” post.
With 9,419 views, that’s 74% more, and 7,109 visitors is 83% more.
May was the highest month this year, which is not a surprise since that was the month with the conference I attended, where I posted notes and my presentation.
Once again, here’s the country map for the fun of it. This year is less skewed towards the US compared to last year, which means it’s more similar to years prior to 2023.
Happy New Year
Thanks to everyone who reads my blog! It was interesting to look back a little bit on some of the all time stats with the hosting provider move.
Happy New Year! And here’s to a hopeful 2025.
(It feels more like spring than winter here right now, and the quails have been hanging around, so the photo seemed appropriate.)