Saturday, July 28, 2018

Deep-diving into my blog stats

Now that I'm getting the hang of actually writing blog posts again, I'm trying to re-familiarize myself with all the other aspects of blogging. I already played around with the template and widgets (essentially changing the entire look of this blog), so I know I retained SOME knowledge on how to work dis biiiitch.

Me, clearly having the time of my life analyzing my blog stats and writing this post

Something I used to obsess over as a teen were the statistics my blog used to bring in. Daily, monthly, weekly, yearly - I was on it all. When my blog first reached 100,000 unique hits I was so stoked. Looking at the locations people were coming in from, the search terms that brought them in, the highest viewed posts and the times of day traffic was most - it was all really exciting.

So, I decided to have a look at all of that again. I know that with me literally posting nothing since the past four years, the stats would be quite different from when I used to check them before. Being brave, I went straight into All-Time.


As you can see, the highest ever traffic on my blog was in the 2010-2012 range. This makes sense, because I was most active around this time, and so was literally everyone else on Blogger. People used to post MULTIPLE times a day. I know that's literally unheard of in this day and age... but yeah. Blogger used to be a LIT party back then. My posts from 2010 are so freaking cringey. In fact, let me see if I can dig up something from that prehistoric era.

WOW, LET'S PRETEND THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

Um... back to the stats. Not sure why the spike in 2014 occurred (unless I underestimated the interest in the one-off post about my 20th birthday).

Let's take a look at where all these views are actually from.



Interesting. Loads of traffic from my homeboys in Pakistan and India. I'm pretty sure all the hits from UAE are me alone LOL. I'm surprised to see China and Russia on the list... But it's the internet, so anything is possible.

So how did all these people actually get here?



Looks about normal. People coming in from Google, Twitter, typing in the URL.... wait.


This caught my interest. 800 hits from a website called Kids Learn To Blog. Did someone.... is my blog....

I went to investigate.

Upon clicking the link, I was taken to a cute little website that was designed for kids, filled with posts on how to start/maintain a blog. That shit is actually so nice - it makes my heart warm that someone's out there looking out for kids who need help to set up their own space online. But what really surprised me was this...



NO WAY. EXAMPLES? Best kids blogs? SUBLIME???? Yo, that's a top tier compliment. You can't just throw around a word like 'sublime'.

Scrolled a little more and...

http://kidslearntoblog.com/best-kids-blogs-inspire-teens/
Click on the image to go to the page and see it for yourself!

ASDFGHJKL THAT'S ME!!!!!! When I saw this, I was literally SHOOK. First of all, even making a list on a random part of the internet is a big deal for me. But to actually have a BLURB about my blog... like... someone actually summarized my blog for a list. Someone said I had INGENUITY. Someone actually thought I was worthy enough to be a BEST KID BLOG.

((We're just gonna ignore the fact that I never wrote anything targeted towards kids.... okay? We're also going to ignore that I never had a favourite 'word of the week'....))

To think that almost 900 people visited my blog because it was listed as a 'Best Kid Blog' on some website (realistically, only eight or so must have actually shown any interest in the contents of it after clicking hahaha).... So so cool.

After feeling really good about myself for this achievement (for doing absolutely nothing except word vomit about my life), I thought to seek out the person who actually deemed me worthy of this list. Not hard considering she was marked as the author of the post.

I present to you...


Dr. Patricia, whoever you are... thanks girl.

Aaaaand that conducts my deep-dive. I really went down a rabbit hole there, and ended up finding out a lot more about my blog than I expected. I don't know what to do with all this information though. A part of me wants to contact Dr. Patricia and thank her for deeming me worthy of such a list (which actually does have other, really cool blogs on it as well btw)... But a part of me is scared that if I contact her, she'll see the state of my blog now and take it off her list. LOL.

Should I do more online deep-dives in other areas of my blog-related life? I am actually starting to think that it would be a really good idea to dig out some gems from the past. Or, it could end up in disaster. Either way, it would be pretty entertaining!

See you really soon,

Furree

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Hi

...

Hi.

Four years ago, I abandoned this blog. Not because of any particular incident, but because I simply lost the drive and incentive to write. Blogging used to bring me loads of happiness back when I was a teenager - mostly because it served as a distraction from my homeschooling, a place to overshare stories about my work, and it also unintentionally became an avenue to meet loads of like-minded people (some of whom are still my friends to this date).

I still don't really have any proper incentive to blog. I'm not exactly overjoyed typing all this out. Like I'm pretty sure my writing has gotten shittier... But I'm still gonna try. I've been feeling pretty low about myself and I have around a month of free time on my hands (will definitely update everyone - or no one in particular LOLLL - about what I've been up to all these years) so I want to make use of it.

I drafted all the previous posts. Not because I want to 'start afresh' or anything dramatic like that... it's literally because the freaking font won't change and I am trying to go for a more monochromatic effect as opposed to the bright neon colours I previously used on a black backdrop LOL. So once I figure that out I'll probably republish them (edit: they're back up now!).

Here's a really recent picture of me (literally taken a day ago)


ALSO - WHOEVER IS ACTIVE ON HERE PLEASE COMMENT SO I CAN GO TO YOUR BLOG AND CATCH UP ON YOUR LIFE. THX.

See you really soon,

Fareeha