#StandWithUkraine

Forty eight months blogging milestone

Last week the fourth birthday of this blog had passed and I spent some days pondering this post. I think the phase this blog has entered is trivially recognized as The Slump that sooner or later sneaks up on some (most? all?) blogs.

And the problem with writing in and about the slump is that it seems like a bunch of worthless excuses prepending blog’s demise. So just to make it clear - this post is no excuse and this blog has no demise in sight. ;)

Readership

In traffic this seemed like typical year-to-year, until it started crashing halfway. Maybe Google just doesn’t like me anymore, maybe it wants to hint that more fresh content is expected.

2008-2012 traffic chart

The takeaway is that I am glad to have zilch anxiety about taking such hit for the first time. Not in this for the numbers after all.

Since there were few posts the commenting activity was just as subdued. Crazy amount of spam on other hand - has me on brink of drastic measure, which I tend to be strongly against (making harder/impossible to comment on old posts, etc).

Content

The largest hit to the content pool was me running out of core things - actively and daily used by me. I think those kinds of posts are naturally most solid information and enjoyable to write. The upside of the slump is that I slowly attain some new toys and tools here and there with serious usage time on them.

The other personal revelation from the slump is that I prominently dislike to try something for the sake of writing post about it and acting on email pitches along those lines. I have no intention of writing about anything just to fill the day. And seeing those email pitches coming in droves for years made me realize just how disingenuous and entitled most of them are.

Design

Technical and visual progress on the blog’s theme hit the slump as well. I think theme is holding up well, but some of the technical decisions in it are dead end.

My personal WordPress tinkering also took a heavy hit from WordPress taking over my professional occupation. Some time into it I realize that no amount of wonderful (horrible) things at work are replacement for picking and working on ones own personal creations. So I will be making effort to work on personal stuff again and push some of my private projects over the brink of becoming public and open source at last.

Earlier this year I moved to LiquidWeb VPS to accommodate for launch of my new QueryPosts WordPress code reference project, so now I also have much more freedom to tinker with internals to improve performance and so visitor experience.

Goals

While hitting slump is nothing to be proud of :), I currently feel content about the blog. It no longer has to prove that it will stay around to me or anyone else. So other than getting back into having fun with internals I am not setting any clear cut goals for the next year. Will see how it goes.

Overall

Slow year. Slumpy year. It happens, so slow or fast - let there be more of them to come for this blog.

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6 Comments

  • Brian Krogsgard #

    "The Slump" is an universal virus that likes to attack all blogs, in my opinion : ) I look foward to you crawling out of it, thought I'm still jealous of your overall traffic for a personal blog!
  • Rarst #

    @Brian Krogsgard It sure seems like that. Hope this one has good chance of recovery. :)
  • Jim Sefton #

    Hi Rarst, Long time now speak! Sorry for my small contribution to the slump, I haven't been active on blogs for a while and mine is in a cryogenic state now, waiting to be thawed out sometime in the future! I know what you mean about hitting the slump though, I did the same although I did totally neglect it. Mine does attract an inordinate amount of spam though, especially over the past few months. I too am considering what I can do to resolve that. The only way I can see that would actually work is Facebook comments, but something about that just doesn't sit right. Anyway, good luck with the blog, I hope you get out of your slump. Congrats on keeping it going for so long though, a lot don't get anywhere near this length of time. Jim
  • Rarst #

    @Jim Sefton Good to see you around and good luck getting your blog alive again. :)
  • Avi #

    Hi Rarst, I'm not new to your blog, but I'm not regular also. I am always amazed to see your blog without any ads.Still you should add ads to your blog, if not on the content than on the sidebar or footer.
  • Rarst #

    @Avi Why bother? This blog doesn't have traffic to generate any meaningful revenue from them and dealing with ads means I need to deal with legal and tax aspects, which can be dumb and boring around here. You'll have to get it advertisement free, for now at least. :)