100K - Our top five posts

We last checked the popularity of our entries when we hit 1,000 posts. Since that was back in September, the line-up hasn't changed much. But some of my thoughts about why these keep showing up do.


5) Pardon Our Mess
In this post I took a radio station to task for posting "Under Construction" pages on their website. Why is it pulling in all kinds of traffic? Perhaps its the title, I don't know. I wonder if the subject of that post, WJMA-FM, has experienced any boost as a result. (their site's improved since the posting, but they've yet to change the images on the animated banner)

4) The Straco Layout, Part 10 - Paving the Pegboard Paradise
3) The Straco Layout, Part 2 - Getting the board
The Straco Layout series is about a portable display of early 1960's Japanese tinplate toy vehicles and trains I worked on. I was curious as to why these two posts (out of the 25+ in the series) attracted the most hits, so I typed "Straco board" into a search engine. I got a hit for the board of the Straco Corporation of Singapore. Not sure if it completely explains the traffic, but it's possible.


2) Marching Memes 3 - and a new topic
The only reason I can think of for this remaining popular is the word "meme" in the title. The content certainly doesn't justify the interest (not that it's bad, it's just doesn't have any type of broad appeal). The mystery continues.

And the most popular post of all time remains:

1) Goodnight Opus
Comic strip commentary is a regular feature on this blog. But few of my posts even come close to the traffic generated by this one.  The final installment of Berkeley Breathed's comic strip "Opus" was a major event, and one that continues to garner interest (and hits).

One thousand posts -- our top five

As promised when I marked the milestone of the 1,000th post to Off Topic'd, here are the five most popular posts in the six-year history of the blog. I'm not quite sure what it all means, though...

5) Pardon Our Mess
I have to admit, I have no real idea of why this post gets so much traffic. This 2008 post took a local radio station to task for putting up a website with "Under Construction" icons on it. It was basically a discussion of why it's more professional to not go public with a site until you're ready instead of using such place holders. But if it means there's one less animated GIF of a worker digging, I guess it's all worthwhile.

4) The Straco Layout, Part 10 - Paving the Pegboard Paradise
The Straco Layout series chronicles the construction of my portable display of early 1960's Japanese tinplate toy vehicles and trains. Why this post, out of the entire series, made it into the top 5 is a mystery to me. It just shows how I painted a road on the pegboard base. Maybe it's the embedded video that makes it so popular?

3) The Straco Layout, Part 2 - Getting the board
I'm not sure why Part 10 of this series garnered so much traffic. I have even less of an idea why Part 2 tops it in number of page views. It's a very short post explaining why I decided to go with a pegboard for the layout. That's it. Really.

2) Marching Memes 3 - and a new topic
I wonder if the reason why this post gets so many views is because of the word "meme" in the title. And yet the other posts in the series (Marching Memes and Return of the Marching Memes) don't have anyway near the traffic of this post. This is one of the reasons I don't use the stats to shape the direction of the content.

And the most popular post of all time is:

1) Goodnight Opus
I write about comic strips frequently on this blog. My primary purpose is to encourage folks who dismiss comic strips as a momentary amusement to take a second look at the quality of graphic and storytelling talent lavished on this "disposable" art form. The final installment of Berkeley Breathed's comic strip "Opus" was a major event in the comics field, and perhaps outside of it as well. I'm not surprised my discussion of the strip's finale garnered interest.

One thousand posts

This is the 1000th post published on this blog, so it seemed a fitting time to take a brief look back. When it started back in August, 2006, this blog was called "CE Conversations," and was co-written by Ken Nail and myself.

The idea was to have a consumer electronics blog with alternating viewpoints. Hence, a Consumer Electronics Conversation (clever, no?). Over time, Ken became involved in other activities, and his contributions to CE Conversations lagged, making it a very much one-sided conversation. (You can see what Ken's up to in his own blog, Milestones).

And over time the focus started to shift from consumer electronics to Internet technology and social media. And from there, my own personal passions -- classical music, comic strips, vintage toys, etc. -- came to the fore. The blog was now permanently off topic, and so it became Off Topic'd.

In the olden days, traffic climbed very slowly. Whenever we reached a significant milestone (or mille borne in French), we'd take a look at the stats and report on the top five posts (and bottom five posts) of all time. We started with Blogger, and when Google took the service over, a lot of those stats got blown out. Even so, it will be fun to look over the last six years as best we can, and see which of our kilo posts were killer posts, and which were filler posts.

Since the topics for Friday and Monday posts are already set, we'll begin our look back on Tuesday next (I'll put links in when they publish). Thanks to all our readers. And special thanks to everyone who's commented (except the spambots, of course).