Two months later

As promised in the plan of my Two Week Review, the following is an assessment of this blog after two months in operation, covering Portland A-Z and a lot more.

Friends and regular readers (hopefully some are in both categories) know I’m a nurse; the way we write and revise Care Plans is by Assessment of objective and subjective data, Evaluation based on understanding of that information, then revision of the Plan to respond to the first two. So…..

Assessment
Since the two-week update mid-January, I’ve published about 165 posts, bringing the total to over 200 since inception. The approximate categories/numbers:

Portland/Oregon – 43
Personal anecdotes/info – 7
General interest/US/World – 22
City Geek – 44
* 20 Charter
* 9 City Council agendas/agenda items
* 15 process/parks/other issues
Campaign financing/ethics – 1
Steve’s photographs – 47; Guest photographs – 2

Seventy-two new users have signed up as registered users on the site since the blog started. Do you know that as a registered user, each time you check the site you can click “Recent posts” in the left sidebar to see if there are new comments you haven’t read? It’s a handy feature. Many readers are now asking for the site directly, with 572 user logins recorded in February.

The most popular specifically-requested post was It’s the end of the world as we know it, on PDC employees unionizing, with 579 page views and 181 times as the requested entry page. Something tells me the draw was the catchy title or pervasive love of R.E.M. songs, but I hope some folks read the post, too. Close behind, The Portland Mercury Rocks, with 572 views. In third place, surprisingly, Before and After on Parks Policy – After. I doubt any rock fans came to that one by mistake. Oregon – Red State in ’08, Biodiesel and the price of corn tortillas in Mexico, and Steve’s Comet McNaught photos topped the popularity list in January. The top referrers are Lefty Blogs which sent readers here 440 times in February, Google with 385, and Blue Oregon, 375.

The post with most comments here was The Ethical Choice?, at 13. Blue Oregon and The Mercury picked up a couple of my posts and enjoyed lively comments about them on theirs. Special thanks to Pete Jacobsen for pointing out what I actually said, in addition to the snip posted, on Blue Oregon.

Webalizer Statistics for blogger geeks (the one I understand as most indicative of traffic is “visits”, which apparently is the closest estimate of number of times real people look at the blog):

Total hits since 12/28/06 = 232,785
Total visits = 29,567
Average daily visits = 438 in January, 509 in February
Number of Unique User Agents = 461 in January, 470 in February
Highest one day visits = 611, on February 8th, the day after the Charter Change referral vote. I love you, readers, for caring about such dry stuff!

Evaluation
* As my ever-supportive brother notes, averaging more than 500 visits a day is about 499 more than expected. And so much more fun than having to keep my house clean for visitors!
* I’m happy with the mix of topics, with an even balance between intensely geeky city analysis and more general Portland/Oregon stuff, plus the daily photograph for visual interest and the occasional beyond-Oregon post.
* I’m more thrilled than I can express, that the week of highest daily visits was the one of the final City Council hearing with their vote sending the Charter Reform measures to the ballot. Seeing the visits peak and realizing how many Portlanders care about seemingly dry, dull policy issues confirms my trust and belief in our citizens’ good hearts and thoughtful minds.
* It’s interesting to me that posts with titles referencing print newspapers are consistently wildly popular. Either we all relate to common staples of our news diet, or the newspapers’ employees love reading about themselves and tell all their friends.
* Another statistic that puts a smile on my face is the fact that the number of visits here drops by about 100 on weekends and holidays. Apparently public employees aren’t the only ones who do a little web surfing during work hours. Hey, this is an educational blog, you keep right on reading whenever you choose.
* Numbers of comments recorded here don’t correlate with visits to a particular post. I love it when readers comment, but I remain comfortable with the requirement of registering here even though I recognize it cuts down on the comments.

Plan
I’m not planning any major changes, unless anyone would like to make a good suggestion in the comments to this post. I’ll post the next review after six months, ish. “Ish” because we are planning an expedition for the end of June and beginning of July, and I hope to be posting glorious photos from around the west at the end of June, rather than dry statistics.