This site officially launched on January 4, so I now have one month of data to look back on. I bought the domain name from GoDaddy at the annual rate of $10.19. My friend, Dan, gave me free hosting. So, financially, this has been a pretty cheap project.
I decided to use WordPress to create the blog. I took the default template (Kubrick) and striped out all of the styles. Using the structure as the baseline, I created this theme. It’s simple and minimal, but I like it. I find it refreshing to see so much whitespace. In the past month, I’ve found myself spending hours on small tweaks that no one will notice (typography, block quote styles, header, etc.). Overall, it’s been a lot of fun. It’s kind of like having a character in a RPG. You spend a lot of time making small changes and adjustments to fit your personality, the only difference is other people (friends, family & strangers alike) will see it as well.
I’ve become quite familiar with WordPress and I’m very impressed with it. It’s simple to set up and has tons of customizations. I’ve also downloaded quite a few plug-ins to enhance the site. Some of these plug-ins are obvious (Digg button, Twitter, Add to Subscribe Button & Picassa plug-in). Others are invisible (tweaking RSS feeds, Google Sitemap, Google Analytics & Akismet). All of them have been easy to install and quite helpful.
I’ve set up my Twitter account to feed to this site and Facebook. I’ve also set up my RSS feed to automatically create new Notes in Facebook whenever I have a new post. This seems to have been beneficial since most of my Referral traffic is from Facebook. I’ve also imbedded my wedding pictures from Picassa as a blog post. Finally, I signed up for Amazon Affiliates, so I’ll receive a % of any purchases that someone makes from a product linked from this site.
I feel I’ve kept the site fresh with 21 posts and 30 comments. I’ll do my best to keep up this pace. I’ll continue to keep the topics varied, because I’ve found that even a mundane post will receive quite a bit of traffic thru google. My HTCT100 Soundbar review has been visited the most from Google search results.
Here is a look at the first month’s numbers:
- 519 Visits (58% Direct Traffic / 25.24% Referring / 16.76% Search Engines)
- 282 Returning Visitors / 237 New Visitors
- 1,517 Pageviews
- Top 3 Blog Posts (HTCT100 Review / Wedding Pictures / Re: Hope We Believe In)
- The majority of my Google traffic is a result of either HTCT100 or Call of Duty.
So, readers, what are your thoughts? Any suggestions?
