Christopher Roberts | Technology Bloggers

Post 300 – milestones

13th October 2012 9 Replies Christopher Roberts

Last week I emailed Jonny to let him know that I had just published my 150th article. I thought it was about time I checked up on the rest of the blogs stats, to see if we had any other milestones coming up, and as it turns out we do! In fact, we have a lot.

For starters this is post number 300 and today the blog turns one and a half!

The blog launched on the 13th of April 2011, making it 1 year and 6 months old – 549 days old today. That means that we post a new article on average every 1.8 days, averaging 3.9 posts a week. Basically we publish around 4 posts a week. Not bad.

This is my 151th article, which means (as I mentioned above) I have just hit my 150th article milestone. Go me!

I started this blog with the aim of it being a community project. Yes I understood that for at least the first 6 months I would be contributing almost all the articles, but as time progressed, my aim was to develop the blog so that we have a range of writers who contribute great content, so that almost every day you can log on and read something interesting written by a different writer.

When we started, way back almost a year and a half ago, we had just 11 post categories: Blogging; Computing; Internet; Media; News; Search Engines; SEO; Social Networking; Technology; Updates; and WordPress. Since then categories have been split down into Specialist Post Types and Topics.

New topics that have been added and filled thanks to new writers include: Apps (notable contributions from Ron and Steve), Browsers, Business (notable contributions from Andrew), Charity, Software, Tablets, Gadgets, Smartphones, Games, VoIP, Media, Science (notable contributions from Jonny), and Environment (again notable contributions from Jonny).

So a year and a half in how does it look in terms of the writer balance? Take a look at the image below, the people represent the articles our writers have written.

An image showing the different writers who have contributed posts for Technology Bloggers.

Considering on an average blog around 90% of the content comes from one main writer, with guests occasionally writing a post or two, I wouldn’t say we have done that bad.

For your interest, around 50% of the content has been written by me, around 16.5% by Jonny, Ron and Alan have jointly written around 6.5% and other writers make up for the other 27%.

Jonny is soon to reach a milestone of his own, as he will soon have written 50 posts for the blog.

In terms of comments, our count currently stands at 3,445 meaning that very soon we will hit the 3,500 mark. With 300 posts and 3,500 comments, we currently average around 12 comments a post.

So to recap the important milestones:

This is our 300th article
Today the community is one and a half years old
Christopher’s 150th article went live last week
In three weeks time (hopefully), Jonny will publish his 50th post
The blog has had nearly 3,500 comments – currently we have had 3,471

In terms of other stats…

Alexa currently ranks us in the top 70,023 of sites on the net, meaning that there are less than 70,023 sites visited more than ours
Alexa also ranks us among the 11,500 most visited websites in the UK
We have a Google PageRank (on our homepage) of 4
227 people follow @TechBloggers on Twitter
256 people like Technology Bloggers on Facebook
17 people follow Technology Bloggers on Google+

This is a mementos post. With so many milestones converging around the blogs 1.5th birthday, I felt that we needed something to celebrate. So, I have made something which I think fits the bill!

May I introduce to you, Technology Bloggers new logo!

Technology Bloggers new logo!

That’s right, we have a new logo! I have been meaning to update it for a while now, as many of the people who were in the old logo weren’t actually part of the community. Equally, there were many valuable members of our community that were missing from the logo.

Unlike the last logo, this one actually has a design theme. Every avatar that is featured in the new logo is a member of the Technology Bloggers community. The stem of the T (the upwards bit that looks like this ‘|’) is made up of all our current writers. Any writer with an avatar features in the stem of the T. The top of the T (the cross-wards bit that looks like this ‘-‘) is made up of avatars of commenters. The commenters featured are the commenters who have left the most comments to date.

You may notice that four people feature twice in the logo, me, Jonny, Alan and Ron. The reason is because we are both top contributors and commenters, and that is why we join the writers part of the logo to the commenters part of the logo. The logo was one layer short and looked a bit distorted, so I needed another row of writer avatars (which I didn’t have) so I had to work out what four avatars to use to plug the gap, and as we have jointly contributed the most comments and articles, I thought it should be us.

This is almost certainly not the last logo update, but it is our new logo for the time being. I hope you like it – I think having avatars from actual members of the community in it makes is better and I hope you do to.

The logo was designed on the 6th of October and launched publicly on the 13th of October.

Another milestone – our second ever logo has just been released 🙂

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Gravatar – are you making use of it?

30th April 2012 20 Replies Christopher Roberts

I don’t think enough people know about Gravatar and the what it does, so as a result I have chosen to write an article about it, to help you get more out of the web.

What is Gravatar?

The best way to describe what Gravatar is is the same way that it is described on Gravatar.com: A Globally Recognized Avatar. But what does that mean?

“Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?” – Gravatar.com

How better can I explain that? A Gravatar is an image that you can be associated with across the web. Any Gravatar compatible site – like most WordPress blogs, and many other forums, blogs and websites across the net – that you put your email into will display your unique image, whenever you write a post or leave a comment.

When you finish reading this article, cast your eye at my avatar, you can see it on the left of the writer bio box.

Until recently I had been using the Technology Bloggers logo as my avatar, however I have chosen to change to using my own website logo – the iconic blue ‘C’.

When you sign up for Gravatar, you also get your very own profile page. Here you can link to your website and write a short bi-line for the world to see. Everyone has a custom URL, and until today I didn’t realise that mine was actually my name! Okay, by default it is, but I was the first person with my name to register with Gravatar, which means that I must have had one for a pretty long time!

To check out my profile, please go to https://en.gravatar.com/ChristopherRoberts.

How Can You Make the Most Out of Gravatar?

If you scroll down the ‘our writers‘ page you will see that some of our writers have chosen to add a Gravatar to their email address, so that when they post, their customised image comes up. I then take this image and post it next to their profile on the our writers page. Some people don’t send us an avatar, and don’t have one linked to their email, so they have a randomly generated image associated with them.

The default image if you do not have a Gravatar - the Gravatar logo

If you look down the list you will see some of each. Which do you think looks better? Personally I believe that having an image of your choosing that follows you everywhere on the web is a great idea.

How to Get a Gravatar Avatar

Linking your email(s) to your chosen image(s) really could not be easier.

Step 1: Go the the Gravatar website.

Step 2: Click ‘Sign Up’ – this can be found on the top bar

Step 3: Enter your email address

Step 4: Check your emails and click the confirm link

Step 5: Upload the image you want to follow you everywhere on the web

Step 6: Voila! Any time you comment on Technology Bloggers of any of the other ‘kajillion’ blogs, websites or services that support Gravatar, your image will be associated with you

You can add more email addresses if you use different ones for different sites, and can even add more pictures, so you can comment on one site with one picture and on another site you have a different one!

Once you have an account you can also set up your Gravatar profile page, where you can tell the world about yourself, and link to sites you love.

Gravatar makes you identifiable across the web as a unique individual, not just another faceless/anonymous name.

Friday the 13th and 1 year for Technology Bloggers!

13th April 2012 24 Replies Christopher Roberts

Some would call today an unlucky day, as it is Friday the 13th, a day renowned for its link to bad luck. It is not an unlucky day for Technology Bloggers though, as today we are celebrating our first birthday!

I want to use this post to thank everyone who has been instrumental in creating this fantastic community blog we have, and also to showcase the blogs fantastic achievements, just 1 year in.

Traffic

The first thing I want to say about Technology Bloggers, is how blow away I am by the traffic we have received. Excluding December, every single month, the number of people visiting the blog has grown.

In June 2011, we received just over 1,200 visitors, in October 2011 we received around 3,400 visitors, and last month (March 2012) Technology Bloggers had almost 7,000 people visit the blog. Don’t believe me? Check out our Google Analytics:

Technology Bloggers traffic statistics from April 2011 to April 2012

Awards

Top blogs often receive awards, and I am proud to announce that Technology Bloggers recently received it’s first award. Last week Technology Bloggers was named the British Gas Blog of the Month!

We were awarded the British Gas Blog of the Month for our work on educating people about smart meters, and how they are changing the way we use our electricity, along with our work on environmental issues. Special thanks go out to Jonny regarding his series Can We Improve the Health of the Planet?

Other Achievements

After just two weeks of the blog being live, I wrote an article about our achievements, I did the same four months in. As today is the blog’s first birthday, I thought it right to do the same sort of review today, and compare it with our past reviews.

Two weeks in Technology Bloggers had 14 articles, which had been written by our 4 writers, four months in the blog had 65 articles written by 15 writers. 1 year in, this is Technology Bloggers 205th article, and we currently have 47 writers! That means we publish an article, on average every 1.78 days, and each writer has written on average, 4 articles. Many of our writers have written just one article, whilst some like myself, Jonny and Ron have written significantly more – we average 47 articles each!

Two weeks in, Technology Bloggers had had 85 comments posted by 22 different commenters. By 4 months, we had had 788 comments posted by 120 commenters. When this article went live we had had 2,849 comments contributed from over 500 commenters! That’s a lot of comments! Special kudos to Jonny, Alan, Anna, DiNaRa, Peter and Neil, for their outstanding contributions to Technology Bloggers commenting community 🙂

14 days in, and at 4 months, I wrote about Technology Bloggers Alexa rank. To be honest, it isn’t very accurate, and I have given actual traffic statistics for the blog, but I thought I should mention it anyway, as I have done in the past. 2 weeks after its launch, Technology Bloggers was ranked in the top 1,400,516516 of sites on the internet, by Alexa. By August 2011, Alexa believed we were in the top 165,351 of sites on the web. Today our rank is 85,826, which is a very respectable rank, but nothing to become to obsessed about.

Technology Bloggers is still a Google PageRank 3, which is very credible for a 1 year old blog, however again, is nothing that accurate or to be obsessed over.

Across social media, since August we have had 41 new likes, taking our Facebook page up to a total of 52 likes, and 45 more Twitter followers, taking us up to 69 Twitter followers. Our RSS feed is also well subscribed to.

Basically, Technology Bloggers is doing really well, and that is something we should all be proud of!

Dofollow

Technology Bloggers started out as a dofollow blog, and it will remain dofollow for the foreseeable future. It is a community blog, and so that everyone can benefit, the blog should be dofollow.

Thank You

Now it’s time for me to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of the blog this year. Thank you to everyone for your contributions and efforts, which have helped make this blog the fantastic community blog that it is today!

We have already had community awards, and will have one every year. In this article I would like to pay special thanks to Jonny, Ron, Alan, Chadrack, David, Marc and Peter who have all played a massive role in ensuring Technology Bloggers is where it is today. I have no doubt that without these people, the blog would not be as good as it is today, and the community would be noway near as strong.

Here’s to the future success of Technology Bloggers!

Well done everyone and thank you, lets keep this community alive, so we can all continue to benefit 🙂

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A whole community of technology bloggers!

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