Unabashed

Okay, all my archives are finally in place, so past articles are available for your reading pleasure again (if you’re into that sort of thing). But–for some reason I lost some formatting in the transition, along with a few images. I’ve got 186 articles on this blog now, and I’ll start working through them gradually, fixing the formatting errors (they’ll still read, but, for example, apostrophes are now little weird blocks).

Unabashed is healthier than I thought it was, too, which is very encouraging. When I suffered the massive format failure when I was with Yahoo! Hosting, my Google Analytics stats dropped–in one day–from roughly 40 unique visitors (UVs) per day to 1. Yes: 1. Some days there were less than one–that being a big, fat, donut hole–and very rarely did they ever creep above the 1. I had no idea why it happened that way, but it continued even after I’d made the switch to Surpass Hosting, and I’ve really started trying to figure out why lately. Primarily because I know personally of at least ten folks per day who were looking at my blog. The stats just weren’t accurate. But along with switching to Surpass I gained a new stats analysis tool which was showing roughly the same results, and at that point I began thinking that I really must suck, that people hate me, and that I should pull the plug on the whole thing.

But (again, another but) then last night, just for giggles, I checked the stats for my root domain: mattmitchellfiction.com, without the subdomain /unabashed, and there I found all my missing little UVs. And even better, since my move to Surpass, my visits have increased. Since March 1st I’ve had 1749 UVs hitting 2264 pages. That’s a record around here. True, they’re not Scalzi numbers (whose are? Not many), but they’re respectable enough for me to be entirely content that at least I don’t suck, and pulling the plug might not be altogether necessary. Some of the traffic has come from Down in the Cellar, where my latest story has been published, but a lot of it just comes through Google and Yahoo! searches. For some reason a lot of people end up at my “Miraculous Coffee Entry.” I guess there are a lot of coffee lovers out there.

So, in response to this, and seeing that a lot more traffic comes through my root domain than I had previously supposed, I’ve revamped my front page with my little mascot friend “Viva the Beaver,” who I drew up about ten years ago. (He’s the little guy with the harpoon peeking out of the right hand column now). It’s not a very professional job, but it’s all I had in me to do last night, and, most importantly, it links to here, where the bulk of my ruminations reside. Check it out and let me know what you think, I would appreciate the feedback, whether good or bad.

So the state of the blog is good. Better than it’s ever been, really. And there are developments coming down the pipe that I hope you’ll enjoy.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, Matt Mitchell, stats, Unabashed