December Site Statistics

Hello, friends.

Just a quick update with some site statistics. My site officially launched on December 6, 2010. As of December 31, 2010, my site had 1331 visitors from 76 different countries/territories according to the delightful Google Analytics.

My site had been viewed mostly by friends and acquaintances of mine in its early days. I promoted my new blog posts via my Twitter account (@russhollander), my Facebook page, and (later when I remembered it) my LinkedIn account. Feel free to add me on any of these social media platforms.

Then I published my “Why I Use Linux” post on Thursday December 30. Like all my posts, I scheduled it to appear online at 6AM, although it had been written the night before. Up to that point, my site had about 250 viewers from 4 countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. And based on Google Analytics, I could typically guess which of my friends or relations had been viewing my site based on what cities were represented in Google Analytics. For example, I have a friend living in Vancouver, BC. I’m pretty sure he was the one visitor from Vancouver, although I could have been wrong.

Around 9AM on Thursday, December 30 I submitted my blog post to one of my favorite Linux news sites: LXer.com. It was approved shortly thereafter, and the hits started rolling in. Even more exciting, people started commenting on my post, and I commented back. It was great to participate in the Linux community as an article publisher for a change, rather than an article reader as I normally am.

I’m really excited that such a large number of people from all over the world were interested enough in my article to follow the link, and I’m extremely grateful to the people that commented and shared the article via Twitter, Facebook, and other means. Thanks readers. I hope that in the future I will continue to write stuff worthy of your consumption.

I’m proud to say that more than 50% of my visitors are using Linux when they visit my site, although this isn’t surprising since so many of my visitors were coming to read an article about why I choose to use Linux. Firefox is the most popular browser choice out there, with Chrome (and its derivatives) coming in second. The Chrome statistics are slightly skewed though because I’ve done all my site administration using Chromium, so the Chrome numbers are inflated.

Operating System Statistics

Browser Choice Statistics

Thanks everyone for visiting and reading. This is very encouraging for someone new to the blogging scene. Now, if I could just coerce someone from North Dakota, South Dakota, Rhode Island, and Mississippi to visit my site, I would have visitor representation for all 50 US states.

Things to look forward to in January: posts about my upcoming trip to the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, posts about my first day at my new job, and exciting/intriguing miscellany. As always, I appreciate your comments, so feel free to post them below.

Have a good one.