Another year has come and gone and being the data junkie that I am, it's time to take a peek and see what was new and interesting by the numbers...
By the numbers: Down a Bit
My total views / visitors was down from the previous year, for the first time ever. It isn't a huge drop, but considering I was able to stick to my goal of averaging 2 blog posts a week, I was a little surprised that the traffic wasn't at least steady. Last year was the big "10 Days to a Better Blog" series, and community, that had fallen away, so maybe there is a chance that's where I was getting some extra traffic from. Ultimately I blog for myself and to share the love, so the numbers don't phase me much, but the data junkie in me wants to tweak them out, dissect them, and find out why.
Top Posts of the Year
Out of the 104 posts that went live this year, here are the top 5:
- Database Migrations with Azure EF7 and DNX - I'm actually quite happy this is my top post because this was the biggest helper to me on a big project earlier this year and I was able to leverage some emerging .Net technology.
- Quick Tip: Run EntityFramework Migration Seeds for MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion Configuration - Another quick tip that saved my butt this year!
- Chapters - One of my newer posts, but one huge milestone for our family (spoiler: I was promoted and we're moving! 8^D).
- Bitcoin Alert – HashOcean: Potential Scam - I learned my lesson this year (here's the followup) about making sure to check in to your Bitcoin resources thoroughly before investing.
- Soup to Nuts: Access VMWare Fusion .Net Apps from Your Mac - Another big helper post for me that has made my .Net App web testing so much more powerful, since I can do immediate Safari / iPhone testing now as well.
Something Old
It's funny how some things never change. For a musings on live / technology blog, my overall #1 post was still on how to peel a frozen banana. It's kind of crazy that it's the 7th result on Bing and 3rd result on google if you search "how to peel a frozen banana". Maybe I should sell ad space now or something 8^D
Something New
This past year I took up a GoodReads challenge and set a goal to read 10 books for 2016. I felt this was fair since I tend to be a slow reader. I surprised myself and read 14 books (and sooo close to finishing #15!) and I really enjoyed it. I failed miserably at the task that inspired my reading, but I think I still succeeded in the grand scheme of things. I'm already building a list for 2017.
...on to 2017
I still like the current routine I am in for blogging. Twice a week seems like a good routine, without being too pressured to get things done (though it did feel like it at a times 8^D). The "Freeform Friday" thing I put in mainly as a backup in case I forgot to post actually wound up being pretty fun and became pretty random (in a good way) I might try to make that a weekly ritual. I fell out of my morning routine for blogging and plan to return to that again, since I think the overall flow of the posts were better as well.
Here's to 2017 and what lies ahead!