This is a little late for New Year navel-gazing, but I thought I’d write a short recap of my blogging last year. It seemed like a good way to pass the time until my book emerged from the depths of the British Library.
First a peek behind the curtain. Although hypotheses.org does not have the built-in analytics of wordpress.com, it does possess its own “Statistiques” function. This is essentially what I’ll be using here, along with a few other unquantifiables like my own attitude to my posts.
In 2014, my blog had 30 481 unique visitors, who came by a total of 67 735 times, so a little more than twice each. Unique visitors and visits in general peaked in July when I attended the BSA conference in Stirling, probably because I wrote a series of blog posts on the event.
Discounting traffic which appears to be from robots (I doubt that I have lots of readers in Ukraine or Malaysia, for example – but do please prove me wrong with a comment if this isn’t the case), most of those who come to my site last year were based in the anglophone world. France and Germany, however, are not far behind.
Now, beyond these observations, I’m not sure what else to say. Perhaps it’s time to use this data to inspire some blogging resolutions. So:
- Write more blog posts about events. These are popular, and fun to do. I’m also intrigued by the fact that many academic gatherings tend to vanish without trace. Like a famous performance, we can recover programs and other ephemera, but it’s often impossible to know what was thought and felt there.
- Try writing in foreign languages. I already have one post in French (here: scroll down) but this is my only effort. For the good of my German as well as my visitor statistics, I should probably try something auf Deutsch. Similarly, writing in French – especially given the material in recent thoughts about Saint Omer – shouldn’t be so tricky.
And there we go. Some statistics and some resolutions. Roll on 2015, and thanks to all of those who came to read me in 2014.
Write more posts on events