Tag Archive | WordPress stats

totally appdicted

Jan26

When I got the iPhone, the thing I was most excited about was being able to check e-mail on the phone, being able to get on the Internet, and learning about apps. I loved the idea of apps and was thrilled at how many were out there. I do have one basic rule which is “find a free app.” So far, I have not paid for one, although some look tempting. Needless to say, the WordPress app is one I adore…being able to check my stats from my phone where before I had to wait till I came home and go through the labor of turning on my computer/getting on the Internet/logging onto WordPress…(to be fair, my laptop is pretty old!)….not my favorite.

The one category that mr. strivingcynic and his daughter were into that I didn’t care about was games. Fruit Ninja, Office Jerk, Floodit, and of course, Angry Birds. Not one of them made its way onto my phone.

On another note, thank heavens for 14-year-olds…I wish I were kidding when I say sc teen has taught us a lot about how our phones work…we’d still be stumbling around trying to figure out how to take pictures on it if it weren’t for her.

one of my all time favorite iPhone photos!

But now, things have changed.

You see, I can’t help poking around the app store and seeing what’s out there. I found one called PopWords, which is like Boggle (sort of)…a word find game. Then there was Unblock Me, where you try to solve a puzzle and move a block off the screen by moving other blocks. I thought that one would be good for unwinding. And then, Words with Friends was brought to my attention. I love Scrabble and word games, so how could I resist? I couldn’t.

And then there’s the fourth and final game. Something I saw during the Christmas break called Temple Run. Basically, it’s like the first scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (well, the second scene). You’ve just grabbed the idol from the temple and you’re making a break for it…running outside on the walls of the temple…being chased by these monster things, jumping over stuff, sliding under stuff, making whip turns. Dying, dying, dying (run into stuff instead of jumping/sliding, falling off the walls, being eaten by the monster things, you name it). I play once…I die. Well, I say, I’m going to run again. And again, and again. By day three my stats told me I’d run 150 times! To be fair, sometimes I die pretty quickly, but all the same. The other day, I found myself Googling Temple Run cheats (sc teen already knows them, by the way). I’ve become…appdicted.

And that is my sad confession. (No, I’m not trying to finish this post so that I can play another round of Temple Run. Why do you ask!?)

Are you addicted to any apps/games/Web sites? When did you realize you might have a problem?

numbers rule

Jan7

A few months ago I posted about how I’d had a weird WordPress stats experience where one day I inexplicably had hundreds of views that were not the result of searches or clicking a referral link from anywhere (I’ve linked to this before, but in case you missed it, here it is. I came to the conclusion that I had to write off most of the 332 alleged views to some sort of bug in the system.

One thing that bummed me out about the “ghost views” was that maybe the week before, I had said something to mr. strivingcynic to the effect of “Gee, it would be cool if I had 5,000 views on the blog by the end of the year.” So my first reaction to 332 views considering I still think 20 is a pretty good day was “Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!” but once I realized that they probably weren’t real (okay, I think 10 may have been real)….well, the number in my head jumped to 5,332.

By mid December, I had reached 5,000. I was excited, or rather, I said I was excited, but I was not-so-secretly (mr. sc knows my thought patterns too well) thinking that it wasn’t really 5,000. So, I was much more excited as December was coming to an end and 5,332 was reached. The weight lifted and I could enjoy my views.

goal plus!

So, I shot this when I woke up New Year’s Day and there were two views from that day already, so the tally for views by the end of 2011 is actually 5,395. Minus 332 is…………above 5,000 (okay, it’s 5,063)!

Of course, why I care so much is another issue!

[I mentioned in earlier this week, that this year, I'm hoping to have 200 posts (up from about 145). I haven't set my "wouldn't it be nice if I got x in 2012 number" yet....but I guess I think it would be nice if it were more than 5,000!]

Do you “care” about views? Do you set numbers goals for your blog?

trust issues

Oct30

I may have a ghost in my computer, well, in my WordPress account. That’s one of the possibilities I’ve come up with to explain an odd sequence of events I experienced on Wednesday.

Of course, let me go back to explain a little. Last week, I mentioned to mr. sc that I had around 3,900 views on this blog, and wouldn’t it be cool if it were 5,000 by the end of the year? We can all do the math, that would be about 500 posts a month. I have had that before, twice. Otherwise, my views don’t really get me there. I have plenty of single-digit days (thankfully it’s been a while since I saw the 0, but I had 4 the other day). 20 something is a very good day for me, most days I end up more between 10-15. Twice I’ve had 49 views, which I thought was amazing.

Then Wednesday came.

On Tuesday night I had posted the first of my aquarium posts. I checked the stats on my iPhone after waking up Wednesday morning (the iPhone and WordPress app addictions are another post). 1 view. Good, no 0 for that day. An hour or so later, I was shocked to see it up to 24. I checked a little later, 90 something, a little later it was in the low hundreds. I was thrilled, thinking my aquarium pictures had brought in views. The number kept climbing.

But I also noticed something I thought was strange. Although the views were being attributed to posts, there was not one single “Like” or new comment anywhere. Not only that, there were no new searches, nothing in the “referrers” column. Nothing that indicated people were coming to my blog except the view count. By the afternoon the count was 329, but then it slowed down and I went to bed with 332.

The next day I was back on form with 16 (only up to 10 when I took this).

my regular view counts look so tiny next to the 332 skyscraper!

I’m still really not sure what to make of it all. My post wasn’t Freshly Pressed, which might account for the skyrocket. Maybe I should just tell myself that I did get 300+ more random views than usual, from people who felt no need to comment and who were able to get to my blog without searching for it or being referred from somewhere. But, my “trust issues” kicked in pretty early and as the day went on, I became more convinced something odd was occurring. I decided to do a little investigating and found someone else who described a similar situation (but didn’t get a solution to my knowledge).

where are they coming from?

Let me add a “don’t get me wrong.” I’m very happy for every view and comment I get, but there was something exciting about thinking that my blog might be “catching.” I won’t say I don’t hope my blog grows, but my ambitions are more on the “5,000 over 365 days would be cool” scale. I know for some people, 332 views a day (or even 5,000 a day) would be abysmal. Never gonna be me.

So, my theories.

1) Someone or someones came to my blog via bookmark or typing the address in directly more than 300 times.

2) Someone somehow looked at my blog and then accidentally (don’t ask me how, I don’t know) kept viewing for another 300+ times (like I was bookmarked and they dropped something on their mouse that led it to simply reenter the same address).

3) WordPress stats and/or computer ghosts heard my wish and threw me some views (if only I’d known it could work that way).

4) Something went a little amiss with my WordPress stats that day.

[I also have a "secret" theory that WordPress did this "ghost views" thing in honor of Halloween. Could be like on April Fool's Day when the actual views were multiplied by 10. OR it could be like a "golden ticket" thing where if you got the "ghost views" you've won....umm, something really cool involving a blog. Like they'll pay for your blog for a year....OR pay you your regular salary for a year and let you try to go pro for a year.....]

My order of likelihood would be 4, 2, 1/3. What are your thoughts? And please share any weird stats stories you have!

Update on more weirdness: I had set this post to publish at 8:30 this morning. 8:30 came and went, and it didn’t post, and was still listed as a draft. I checked and can’t explain the nonposting; it was set for Oct. 30 @ 8:30 and my settings indicate that I’m in the correct timezone. Funny that would happen with this post!