Steven Hodson of WinExtra posted a screenshot of his personal Wordpress stats for the last three years last night. I then posted my stats for a similar period of time, and Steven shot back with some question about traffic, and the ebbs and flows of readers.

Being the stats nut that I am, I went and pulled the data from my own tracking data, and came up with this.

I made a conscious choice to analyze what year the posts being read were posted in. I wanted to understand when people read my content, which content kept people coming back over and over again. The chart above speaks for itself: through most of the last year it’s clear that the most popular posts were made in 2005.

What is also interesting is the decreasing interest in 2007 posts as 2008 progressed. Posts from 2006 remained steady, as there are a number of posts in that year that amount to my self-help guides to Web compression, mod_gzip, mod_deflate, and Web caching for Web administrators.

This data is no surprise to me, as I posted my rants against Gutter Helmet and their installation process in 2005. Those posts are still near the top of the Google search response for term “Gutter Helmet”. And improving the performance of a Web site is of great interest to many Apache server admins and Web site designers.

What is also clear is that self-hosting my blog and the posting renaissance it has provoked has driven traffic back to my site.

So, what lessons did I learn from this data?

1. Always remember the long tail. Every blogger wants to be relevant, on the edge, and showing that they understand current trends. The people who follow those trends are a small minority of the people who read blogs. Google and other search engines will expose them to your writings in the time of their choosing, and you may find that the three year-old post gets as much traffic as the one posted three hours ago
2. Write often. I was in a blogging funk when my blog was at Wordpress.com. As a geek, I believe that the lack of direct control over the look and feel of my content was the cause of this. In a self-hosted environment, I feel thta I am truly the one in charge, and I can make this blog what I want.
3. Be cautious of your fame. If your posts are front-loaded, i.e. if all your readers read posts from the month and year they are posted in, are you holding people’s long-term attention? What have you contributed to the ongoing needs of those who are outside the technical elite? What will drive them to keep coming to your site in the long run?

So, I post a challenge to other bloggers out there. My numbers are miniscule compared to the blogging elite, but I am curious to get a rough sense of how the long tail is treating you.

Tags: apache, blog stats, caching, fame, Google, Gutter Helmet, long tail, posts, search engines, search response, statistics, Steven Hodson, top posts, Web administrators, Web caching, Web compression, Web site designers

Through 2007, the number of posts I made per day/week/month decreased steadily. I know post new items 2-3 items a month, or less. After 2 years of steady entries, I just didn’t have anything to add to the conversation.

Having been an A-list groupie for this entire period, I lost touch with the self-perpetuating scene. A comment that I saw on Top Gear summed it up: Jeremy Clarkson had another chat show host on, and they both commented on how all British chat show hosts end up appearing on each others shows.

That’s how blogging began to feel to me. I began to step back.

I stepped back from true, active day-to-day management of GrabPERF.

I drifted, intellectually and emotionally.

I found the sharp edge of my humor, which had wandered off and gone hitchhiking through the British Isles disguised as Roger Daltrey for six months.

The last few weeks I have been asking myself if I want to go back to blogging, if I want to continue to produce the random ideas for the world to see.

The death of my grandmother a few weeks ago brought my world back into sharp focus. Who is going to see these stories, these tales? Who will be the keeper of my intellectual flame? What will people know of me when I fade away.

I will be trying to storm back. My brain is here.

I AM THOR, GOD OF THUNDER.

Ok…maybe that was delusional. But hang on for another wild ride.

Tags: app, ARIN, blog, Blogging, conversation, EAD, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTTP, IE, it, Om, One, posts, pr

I have talked in other posts about being an accumulator, driven by the mania to buy things that I have no need for, nor will I ever use. A slight variation of this theme is the need to hoard.

How can accumulation be different from hoarding? It’s simple, it’s not simply the accumulation of things; it’s the hoarding of them in caches, stores, and never share them with anyone.

As well as accumulation, I hoard. I am loathe to throw anything away. I must have it there, in case I need it, sometime, anytime.

Files. Papers. Photographs. Gadgets. Their mine. All mine. Don’t touch them! Get out of my space!

It is another inexplicable part of the Bipolar. The manic need to keep it all close. To protect it from others. To keep them from taking your irrationally collected things.

Isn’t the mind a fun place?

Tags: IM, IP, it, Om, One, posts, pr, variation

This morning’s bounty of posts brought in two that will make you think.

First was Port80 Software’s comments on using the Cache-Control mechanism embedded in all browsers. This is interesting to read, as I have been trying to get companies to use this mechanism more intelligently for a number of years. I know that the Port80 team gets it, but it is always nice to have some outside validation of a position you have tried to evangelize for a long time.

The second was Tim O’Reilly’s post on Cal Henderson’s new book on Web scalability. While I am likely to purchase the book for a professional interest, I have one problem with Flickr’s current configuration: static.flickr.com does not use HTTP persistence, something I noted last week. This strikes me as weird.

It’s always good to see Web performance rear its head.

Technorati Tags: Tim O’reilly, Cal Henderson, Cache-Control, http, port80 software, persistent connections, Flickr

Tags: ASP, book, browser, cache-control, control, current, EAD, HTML, HTTP, http persistence, IE, IM, it, Om, One, OReilly, performance, persistent, persistent connections, PHP, posts, pr, Technorati, web, Web Performance

As of right now, five of the seven GrabPERF measurement agents are updated with the new code I created last night.

I am also planning some addition changes to the service, including posts, HTTP Basic authentication, content matching and some basic per-measurement cookie jar technology.

Thank you all for your continued support of GrabPERF.

Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, measurement technology

Tags: content, GrabPERF, HTTP, IE, it, LAN, measurement, Om, posts, Technorati, update

I heard (via TechCrunch and Om Malik and PubSub) that there is some … transition at PubSub.

Now, I have a soft spot in my heart for PubSub, because Bob Wyman was the first person to really notice and appreciate the things I was doing at GrabPERF. I wonder what the future holds for this team.

Frankly, I would agree with Michael Arrington’s comment that PubSub is a likely acquisition target. They do offer a very interesting service, but as a standalone offering, the opportunities are becoming increasingly narrow. As part of a larger Social Web/Web 2.0 firm with a broad range of products, PubSub’s technology could become the glue that holds the various parts together.

Update: Salim Ismail, the now retired CEO, posts his own comments here.

Technorati Tags: PubSub, blog search, Web 2.0, management, acquisition

Tags: Acquisition, app, blog, GigaOm, GrabPERF, HTTP, IE, IM, it, leave, Malik, Om, Om Malik, One, posts, pr, run, search, steps, techcrunch, Technorati, update, web, web 2.0

Normally when I discuss the performance of a page I am measuring using GrabPERF, it’s either good news (”you just got 5 times faster!”) or bad news (”your page hasn’t loaded in 6 months; you still there?”).

Today, something a little different: a question. What’s the question?

Why is the performance of a Technorati Blog (aka Traditional) Search so different from a Technorati Tag Search?

For those of you who have been around for a while, you know that Technorati allows you to search for results based on a Traditional search engine methodology, which is date-ranked, most recent first. It also provides a way to search through the user-defined tags that are appended to posts, or listed as category titles.

The issue that I have been seeing from my measurements is that Tag Searching is performance substantially worse than Traditional Search.

TRADITIONAL SEARCH

---

TAG SEARCH

What I need to understand from the Technorati team is the particular technical challenges that differentiate Traditional v. Tag Searching, because the difference in performance is astonishing.

And then there is the success rate of the Tag Search.

TECHNORATI TAG SEARCH SUCCESS RATE

When I examine the data, almost all of the errors on the Tag Search measurement are Operation Timeouts. I have set the GrabPERF Agent to time out when no response has come back for the server in 60 seconds. So, effectively 15% of the Tag Searches do not return data to the client in 60 seconds.

So, while the Traditional Search has been tuned and optimized, there appears to be much work left to make the Tag Search an effective and useful tool.

Technorati: technorati, search, tagging, seo

IceRocket: technorati, search, tagging, seo

Tags: app, ARIN, blog, Challenges, client, data, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTTP, IE, IM, it, measurement, media, normal, Om, optimize, performance, posts, pr, search, seo, server, Technorati

The update on my Gutter Helmet posts (1 and 2) is that there is no update.

We received a phone call from a local Gutter Helmet rep about 2 weeks ago. He spoke to Samantha who, outlined some of our concerns and issues. I then called and left him a message last week, re-iterating these same concerns, and noting that there was still a leak between the new roof and the new gutters which needed to be fixed by flashing.

Nothing. No response. Silence.

I know it’s Gutter Helmet’s busy season. I know this because the number of hits to my previous posts are increasing.

Maybe some customers are experiencing better installations; I hope so. All I can do is continue to recount my experience to you.

Technorati: Gutter Helmet, gutters, contractors, customer service

IceRocket: Gutter Helmet, gutters, contractors, customer service

Tags: blog, customer service, customers, Gutter Helmet, gutters, hits, HTTP, IE, IM, installation, Issues, it, Om, One, PHP, posts, pr, Technorati, update

I am seeing an awful lot of doubled posts on Rojo today. Anyone know what’s up?

Tags: HTTP, Om, One, posts

The Blog Herald reports on how TypePad suffered a catastrophic drive failure this week that lead to some lost content.

Steve Rubel was one of those affected, and he got a very appropriate response from the CEO of TypePad to explain the situation.

CLICK IMAGE

CLICK IMAGE

GrabPERF caught the outage at about 21:00 EDT on October 4, 2005. Not a long one, but obviously long enough.

Tags: app, blog, content, cro, EAD, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTML, HTTP, IM, it, media, Om, One, outage, posts, pr