Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

I had just got done renewing TripleB’s Hosting Unlimited account well into it’s eleventh year (Yeah, really…I can’t quite believe that either) when I realised I haven’t done one of my stattyness posts in a while. So I felt it was long overdue for another look at the bizarre world of TripleB’s site traffic which usually involves a dollop of self-promotion stirred into a mix of truly bizarre links..

Unique Visitors - 1,942
Visits (Visits per Visitor) - 4,813
Hits - 29,740

This was a bit down on April but I seemed to get a surge of interest on May 31st…my review of Silence in the Library maybe?

Out of this lot I’m apparently quite popular on a Tuesday which is when most people show up, 1,062 of you to be precise. I also get a lot of people checking the site around 6pm and 9pm on average, though a surprising number of you are still awake at 2am.
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Firstly I need to say, once again, happy 400 posts to me! Granted over the last almost ten years I have technically racked up quite a few more posts than this, such as my old Greymatter powered site reaching around 300 posts and then the database collapsed, or the Movable Type version that managed 500 before I switched to Wordpress and then rebooted, cleaning out what I considered to be unhelpful posts. However with my new found vigour and comfort in my blogging style, I have hit 400 posts I’m relatively proud of.

I also noticed a great deal of traffic from automotive websites so thought I’d investigate why. It appears my use of comparative images of the US and European versions of the new Ford Focus were being hotlinked to by many and varied forums, people who didn’t want to extend me the courtesy of hosting the pictures on their own space. Hotlinking is linking to an image on someone else’s site and with forums this means the site being paged every time someone views the thread. I personally hosted them here so that I wouldn’t leech bandwidth off those sites that I found them at, so it irked somewhat that it was happening to me…I wouldn’t have minded if there had been credit for me or for the owners of the images. However more importantly I was curious why this was possible as I was sure I had enabled hotlink protection. A quick check found that with a recent cpanel upgrade the protection had been disabled so I quickly clicked it back on and went looking. Sure enough, the forums are now lacking the images the posters were so exhuberantly discussing. Poor things.

Finally I would like to mention something as we’re on the subject of my site and linking. The Ancient Gaming Noob featured me in a quick run down of new sites linking to him, as I’ve become a fan of his writing. Since then I seem to have recieved a great deal more traffic, for which I’m very grateful.

I’ve had a busy day so far getting the food shop out the way and spending some quality time with Sian as she’s been away all weekend at a hen party, so I didn’t much feel like jumping into my gaming as I would normally be doing around this time. What could I do that wouldn’t be too taxing?

Spring clean! I just had a quick look through all my themes to check they all still work and thankfully only one, Caffeine Addict was broken. The rest work like a charm and when I find the time I’ll convert them over to Wordpress’ handy dandy widgets system for the sidebars so I can keep the sidebar on all my themes current from within Wordpress.

I fiddled with said sidebar some, ditched a widget that was getting no use and reorganised it a bit…there is too much information on there but I don’t really want to be rid of any of it. I also still have to fiddle with my pages and build one for World of Warcraft Rayda, whose personal back story is my creative pride and joy. It’s also reaching epic proportions.

I don’t quite know how this little gem passed me by though I’m pretty sure my once again being absent didn’t help, however I missed a very special occasion. TripleB turned nine years old on October 5th which really does come as something of a surprise to me, though a pleasant one. It never really occurred to me back in 1998 when I joined the new ‘weblog’ craze (though they weren’t known as weblogs back then,) that I would still be here nine years on. The site has had it’s ups and it’s downs which I fully admit to not wanting to discuss as they are in the past now, however these have helped me to grow and adapt, though not always for the better. My long period of reticence certainly hasn’t helped inspire me to come here when I have an opinion to air, something I know I will have to change as we’ve clearly managed to reach the point where pulling the plug on the site altogether without good reason would just be a real waste. I’ve really enjoyed writing here and while I know I have a habit of boring people into submission I’m happy with the fact that this is how I can often be.

For those of you who have stuck around however…thank you!

I had in fact come over here to write a completely different entry. As I have a habit of mentioning this time every year, the Autumnal party spirit is setting in for me. You should read that last post I linked to, as there’s a very important line in it;

“The Christmas spirit begins for me the moment I start shopping for presents, and to do that in December would be foolish to say the least.”

I bought my first present earlier today. In my defence now, I had the idea for this present a month or two back but over the past two months I realised from casual glances in stores that it wasn’t going to be an easy search. I’m not going to give the game away now, however I went through about five on-line stores and three real world ones on more than one occasion, so when I finally stumbled on it today I knew that as early as it is for Christmas shopping, I really ought to get it so that I’m not rushing to find it on Christmas Eve…as has happened before.

So, it may be only mid-October however for me that’s okay. At least it isn’t September.