The Garden Bookshelf in my potting shed, which is the real life equivalent of Themself

During 2016 my blogging was patchy, I had some spells of not blogging frequently (notably in November & December). However I managed to write 81 blog posts, of which 77 have been published. That’s over 47,000 words of new blog posts, not to mention the pictures. Not all of my blog writing was for Themself, some of it went on Cold Steel and a little went on a new fork of my leadership and work-related material called Red Leader. I’ve not really had time to do much with Red Leader, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.

The two forks took some of the traffic away from Themself, but that gives this blog a little more focus, and it still has by far and away the most material of all of my blogs. Some of the material is duplicated, but I’ve been learning about canonical URLs and search engine optimisation. So I’m hoping that it is taking away the material that is less relevant to what I write and review.

Top Ten Posts in 2016

The ten most read posts this year are all older posts, mostly from 2014 & 2015. None of my new posts made it onto the top ten. Most of those on the list got more hits in 2016 than in 2015, with the top post getting double the number of hits. Overall the top ten achieved over 10,000 views. Here’s the list

  1. Six Steps to an Awesome Open University Assignment (2014)
  2. Mintzberg’s 5Ps & Whittington’s 3Ps (2014)
  3. Sainsburys Deli Cooking Instructions (2009)
  4. B203 Revision (2015)
  5. Verify on Gov.UK – a user experience (2015)
  6. 3 Step Guide on How to stream Demand 5 on linux (and windows and Mac too) (2014)
  7. B203 Exam tomorrow (2015)
  8. How to make a Chinese Dragon Hat pt.1 (2014)
  9. A215 Creative Writing is done (2014)
  10. Megagame – Watch the Skies 2: Global Conspiracy (2015)

Fully half of these posts are about my experience as an open university student. Maybe people should buy my book about it!

Top Ten Posts of 2016

None of the posts written in 2016 made it into the top ten viewed in 2016 (the highest was 18th overall). So I thought I’d also share the best performing posts of 2016. Bear in mind that some of these posts were published later in the year, so not all have had the same opportunity to get repeat hits.

  1. Brexit – what will the European Union do? (19 Feb 2016)
  2. T317 EMA Project Lessons (08 Jun 2016)
  3. Performance Objectives – Public Sector (18 Mar 2016)
  4. Scripting Living History Events for Re-enactors – in Five Steps (31 Aug 2016)
  5. Bolsover Castle Under Siege (04 May 2016)
  6. Innovation – what exactly is innovation? (24 Feb 2016)
  7. Narrative and Social Media (20 Jul 2016)
  8. Time Heals No Wounds by Hendrik Falkenberg [Book Review] (20 Jun 2016)
  9. Secret Hitler from Kickstarter has arrived (07 Sep 2016)
  10. The Nightmare Stacks by Charlie Stross [Book Review] (04 Jul 2016)

Other Blogging Highlights

Graph showing posts on Themself by the year that they were written

During the course of 2016 I hit 500 posts on Themself. That was in September, and I did an all-time top ten list then. Although it needs to be repeated that the blog stats only started part of the way through 2013, so I can’t actually tell what the real all-time top ten would be, but it is a fair bet that it is the same as since 2013 given that most of the posts on Themself are from after the stats package was installed.

I’ve also moved hosts. Themself is now in a cloud based linode. That probably means nothing to you. That’s fine. It does mean that I’ve got a cheaper and more reliable host. It might have had an impact on availability too, because everything is now https rather than http. So Themself is secured and you can be sure its my site.

Thirdly, I started a #Shelfie series, which I mean to continue. This involved pictures of bookshelves and a bit of narrative about what is on them.

Do you have a favourite post on Themself? If so leave a comment.

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