My WordPress dashboard is telling me that I’ve reached a milestone – over 300 posts (yesterday’s Brief Notes was the magic 300). OK, so it’s taken since March 2007 to achieve it, which means I haven’t been particularly prolific, but it’s still a milestone for all that.
So I thought that now would be an appropriate time to take a quick look back at the history of blogging on The New Wolfs Howl. It first started life as just my blog on MySpace but within about three posts it had become The Wolfs Howl and moved to WordPress.com (you can still find it at wolfieb.wordpress.com); this is where I really started to learn what blogging was all about and the benefits and pitfalls of using free, multi-user systems to do it.
One of the big pitfalls is having your blog deleted by WordPress for Terms of Service violations, which is what happened in early July 2007 and led to the creation of The Wolfs Howl @ Blogspot (wolfiebhowl.blogspot.com). I wanted to have some advertising on the site and WordPress doesn’t allow that. The Blogspot version then became a mirror for the WordPress site, as well as hosting its own unique content.
By the time Christmas 2007 rolled around, I was fed up with the limitations of both of these free systems and took the plunge to become self-hosted here at The New Wolfs Howl. Since then, the other two have been phased out and this is now the only place where new content gets published.
Over all that time, the content has varied considerably; there have been sponsored posts about all sorts of subjects (quite a bit about online gaming, which I developed an interest in for a while), as well as non-sponsored stuff about sport, religion, technology (like how to go self-hosted) and all sorts of other things. The introduction of Song Of The Day last month represents the only time since March 2007 that I have definitely posted every day but, conversely, has led to me blogging less about other subjects. I have also, in the last few weeks, decided to stop having advertising on the site as I don’t have the time to keep on top of it all.
Over the months, it has been interesting to see the different posts that get attention and I thought I’d take sometime to run you through a few of the most popular ones of all time:
On wolfieb.wordpress.com, the hands-down winner is Usbport.sys, a post I wrote about my attempts to solve a problem with a constantly freezing Windows laptop. It still gets an average of 10 views a day, even though it was first published over a year ago. Seems like a lot of people have trouble with this file. But, re-published here, it doesn’t seem to get any readers at all!
Here at wolfshowl.com, the most popular post is 60 Years Too Late which I wrote in early July this year. It’s my thoughts about the recent (possible) discovery of a Nazi war criminal and why I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by trying to pursue him through the courts now. The entry was Stumbled by one reader and has received a lot of attention because of that, but so far very few comments – which has surprised me.
Following behind that is To Self Host Or Not To Self Host, which is part of series I wrote dealing with some of the reasons why you might want to go self-hosted, and a few of the things you should know before you take the plunge. Other posts in the series – including XML File Is Too Big To Import and Of Blogrolls And Widgets – are also very popular, leading me to think that perhaps I should concentrate on tech blogging. (But I don’t know enough tech to be able to do that).
Also very popular, but one that disturbs me quite a bit, is Suicide Is Painless?. I’m not really sure where my head was at when I wrote that one and looking back on it I don’t really identify with it any more, but judging by the number of views it gets lots of other people do. I’m slightly conflicted over it and may well take it down soon.
And finally there’s 50 Random Things No-One Cares About, which may give you a little bit of insight into who I am.
Here’s to 300 more!
