I haven't been getting nearly enough finished with the blog recently, but almost 15 years and 4,700 posts later, and the Blogger Stats page is saying I've reached ONE MILLION (1,000,000) page views on the blog!
Now we all know that's not a million separate individuals, or even on individual clicking reading a million pages. I had that reality smack me in the face when, after five years of slow and steady growth each month, I was about to have my best month ever, when I suddenly got visited 5,000 times in a minute by a bot in Italy. I've had some rabid "fans" over the years from China, Ukraine, and most recently, a Beetle-esque mania coming from Singapore, but looking at the analytical side, real human being are reading the blog and some even like it.
Most of the bot traffic seems to be "front page" visits to https://gamingwiththegnomies.blogspot.com/ so my individual post data seems consistent day over day, year over year. Sure, I've had to rewrite or even delete a half-dozen posts that triggered some sort of spamming, and I'm not exactly sure why one particular Star Wars d6 actual play post out of over a hundred still gets a dozen hits consistently every week, but I'm not striving for anything that natural web traffic, and I'm certainly not trying to monetize this thing, after all these years.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I would have greatly enjoyed the concept of blogging, particularly with all the Blogger gadgets, as a kid in the 80's. A repository of ideas, wants, dreams would be even more nostalgia now. A place for all the Dice Baseball games, the original place for my first D&D campaign ideas, that I didn't need to rewrite with a twist years later, and perhaps more motivation to paint stuff when I had actual time as a young adult.
Now, there would be the dark ages of the blog, where all I would post would be Magic: the Gathering and my years working in game stores would have to be muted or anonymous regarding retail rants, but the landscape would be completely different with a full-blown modern internet 25-30 years earlier.
As I'm a statistical hobbyist to begin with, I already break down blog traffic a few times each year, most recently in October, and my Top Ten posts with traffic have the scars of bot traffic, so let's do a Top Five posts/projects I'm most proud of:
Convention Recaps - Be it Uncle Duke's Jubilee at Historicon 2010, the most recent HMGS forays, or running My Little Pony at local cons, they might be a little formulaic, but I enjoy writing them and, most importantly, PEOPLE READ THEM!
The COVID Year - Technically October 2020 - September 2021. Base on the year-in-review I linked, I got painting done, I played games with the kids, and generally documented the whole experience. As I wrote, the good old days weren't always good, but I'll take them.
The Lost Dispatches of Feraso... and Beyond - The ability to collect 30+ years of my original D&D campaign world completes one of those "If blogs were around in the 30 years.. and not a BBS" dreams I mentioned above.
Call of Cthulhu 1920's Campaign - In a similar vein, I got to update my CoC game almost in real time. It's a nice build-up from one-shots and character-specific campaign development that transfers directly into a full-blown Masks of Nylarathotep campaign... with an open door to continue things.
The Savage Saga of Maja Millie - My God, it's been 10 years since I started the on-going "Egypt" game with the my girls It's been on hiatus for awhile now, but they were 6 and 4 when it started, and we complete three "seasons" worth of games.
Most importantly, if you're not an Italian, Ukrainian, or Singaporean (?) bot, thanks for visiting the blog! I'll try to do better next time.
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