Another year has passed by and a New Year is on the horizon. For some of you in a different timezone, 2009 is probably already here as I am writing this.
Happy New Year!
If you are groaning ‘oh no, not yet another best of 2008 post!’, my apologies. But, there is a reason there are so many people writing this in their blog.
Last day of the year, gives you time to reflect back on how things were and how you’d like to improve in the coming year. Exactly the reason for this post.
Posts You Like in 2008
Instead of picking the posts ‘I‘ think are the best of 2008, I have picked posts ‘you‘ think are the best – by the number of comments. Here comes the winners of each month with the most comments.
January 2008 – Top Greasemonkey Scripts for New Gmail 2.0 (38 comments)
February 2008 – How to Spot a Fake Paypal Email (25 comments)
March 2008 – Digsby is my Favorite Instant Messenger (20 comments)
April 2008 – Dropbox – My Favorite File Sync Genie (42 comments)
May 2008 – Get CommentLuv & KeywordLuv for your Comments (132 comments)
June 2008 – RevResponse – The Adsense Alternative You Were Looking For (28 comments)
July 2008 – WordPress 2.6 is here (22 comments)
August 2008 – Firefox Extensions Picks of the Week (20 comments)
September 2008 – Oosah Offers 1TB of Free Online Storage (25 comments)
October 2008 – Top 12 Refreshing Remember the Milk Goodies (12 comments)
November 2008 – Guide to 2008 Online & In-Store Black Friday Deals (17 comments)
December 2008 – Top WordPress 2.7 Tips, Hacks, Plugins & Resources (33 comments)
This would be the time I say THANK YOU to each and every one of you who take a minute out of your life to provide useful commentary or even ask a question or answer a fellow readers question.
Looking back at 2008
My posting drastically went down this summer to around a dozen posts a month with my parents visiting me here. I don’t regreat it one bit as we had a blast all summer. You can see the traffic dipping down though but has been improving steadily.
The traffic source graph almost tracks the same path with search engines sending about 65% of the traffic, about 25% from referring sites and 10% direct traffic.
I welcomed around 177,800 visitors this year that resulted in about a quarter of a million pageviews. And I have gained a lot of loyal readers this year - 897 who subscribe via RSS Feed and countless others who come to the site directly. Plus, I have made 452 friends in Twitter.
The numbers are just a reflection of what happened in 2008. It’s not boasting or being humble in false modesty.
One of the best decisions I made was to stop showing ads to my regular readers and only to search engine visitors. You might see ads on older posts but the regular readers who are reading the most recent posts shouldn’t see ads at all. I hope you like that.
Plans for 2009
Here are a few things at the top of my mind at the moment that I plan to do in 2009. They are more guidelines than resolutions. I am flexible like that. 
- New Look – I am planning to unveil a new look and probably even a contest on my birthday Jan 31. This is not just for the sake of a new look but the theme is to de-clutter and make it easier to find things.
- Post Regularly – I don’t post for the sake of making so many posts a month but I should make time to post useful things I come across. I have dozens of drafts that I can publish with a little effort.
- Comment Policy – Having the DoFollow, KeyWordLuv plugin installed means that I get a lot of comments for the sake of link love. I welcome the genuine ones and you know who you are because we converse. But, I need a stricter comment policy to eliminate the fringe ones. That will give me more time to reply than deleting comments.
- Write on More topics – I have always wanted to diversify my topics to include more of WordPress, Web Development & Linux but haven’t done so in order to keep things focussed on what’s gotten the most response so far – Firefox, Technology, Web Apps, etc.
- Comment more – With a day job, I find it hard to get the time to comment in all the blogs I read in my feed reader. But, I still do read your blog if I used to comment in yours earlier this year. I should make time though.
I don’t have set goals for increasing RSS numbers or traffic. Is that weird? I am going to set my focus on improving the blog with more useful content & improved site experience. I think doing that will automatically bring in the traffic and loyal readers.
Happy New Year!!!
I wish you a wonderful and prosperous New Year – 2009!
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