Meta: I’ve Been At This For Three Years!

I have not done a meta article lately. I don’t find them interesting to write even though people seem to show some interest in them. They’re a pain to write and I can write a regular article easier than a meta article.

After all, my normal meta article is just updating you on how much traffic the site gets and how much bandwidth the site uses. I also tend to toss in some stats about where the traffic comes from and what that traffic looks like.

That’s not all that fun and can be a pain to write.

So, let’s get that out of the way…

February wasn’t as great but January was awesome. Last month saw a new level reached – where this site averaged more than 1000 visitors per day. 

visit statistics
Yup… There are a lot of you these days…

I guess the next major threshold will be when I get 1000 unique visitors in a month. Quite a few of you visit more than once, those are the ‘visits’ in the chart. The unique visitors are just that, how many unique people visit the site.

Sure enough, my traffic still comes from Google – even though I no longer use AdSense. As far as search traffic, the next two most popular search engines (for this site) are DuckDuckGo and StartPage. 

The most popular operating systems are Linux, MacOS, and Windows. I suppose that makes some sense. Some of what’s on this site applies to MacOS as they’re a POSIX-compliant operating system.

The most popular browsers are Chrome (and those that identify as Chrome), Unknown, and Safari. Firefox isn’t well represented here. They’re 4th on the list with about 19% of my traffic.

My legitimate traffic comes from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. China and Russia are in the stats, but they’re mostly bots. Finding accurate stats to pick between them can be difficult. So, the above is about what I can figure out.

Yeah, I regularly consume 50+ GB of traffic per month. Considering the site is pretty much pure text, that’s a lot of writing. There are millions of words on the site now and I’m still not out of ideas.

Anniversary!

This is our third anniversary! Three years!!! Whodathunkit?

This was the first article:

Welcome to Our New Home!

I’ve had some guest articles along the way (and at least another one coming when I can schedule it). Most of the articles, 99.999% at least, have been written by me. 

We don’t get a lot of donations but we get a couple here and there. That helps cover the costs, plus people can now advertise here on the site. That’s helpful. I do love my CDN though it (and hosting) are expenses.

This has taken a whole lot of my time. I value my time, but I guess I also value the site. Otherwise, I’d have stopped publishing articles. One of these days I’ll quit but I plan on keeping up with the schedule for the time being.

That schedule? Well, you get a new article every other day. Most of those articles don’t contain any major errors, which is nice. I can’t be perfect all of the time, but I do my best. You’re welcome. 

I’m working my way towards a million visits. That’s nice. 

Here are the most popular articles:

How To: Remove AppArmor From Ubuntu
Change Between CLI and GUI Mode
How To: Disable Sleep And Hibernation on Ubuntu Server

Once upon a time, I was stoked to see 20 visits in a day. So, I guess I’ve built something here. Pardon me, but I’m a wee bit proud of my accomplishment. It has come a long way.

As such, I’m just going to keep this short.

Thank you. Thank you for your readership and encouragement. Here’s to another year. I think I’ve got another year of this in me. We’ll have to see. I’m bound to miss a day eventually, but this is three years without doing so (technically).

Closure:

That’s all, folks. I appreciate you.

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News: Linux-Tips Has Reached It’s Two Year Anniversary!

The headline says it all, Linux-Tips has reached its two-year anniversary! Let me tell you, it has been a whole lot of work! Oh, man, has it been a lot of work. If you want another meta article, read on to appreciate the news with me!

A bit like Sisyphus, there’s always another article two write – and the boulder never reaches the top of the hill. As I finish one article, I’m already starting to consider what the next article will be.

But, I’ve had some help. Out of the 366 (this will make the total 367 published articles) posts, about 10 will have been from other people. I’m grateful for every single one of those. Man, am I grateful…

I suck at making images, or I’d make a celebratory image to show the joy of reaching this milestone. So, use your imagination and pretend I created such an image – and did a good job at it.

I’m aware that this is the 2nd meta article in a row.

I do not care. Nope. I care exactly none. I have none cares.

See the first article was:

Welcome to Our New Home!

The first article with real content came one day later (instead of the usual two days later) because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. It’s an article I’ve referenced a couple of times, but it never got much attention. I used it as the litmus test when checking to see if the site was being indexed in search engines. So, at least it served some purpose!

How To: Generate Sufficiently Complex Passwords In The Terminal

We’re older than two years, as there was an earlier site. That site still exists, but many articles will automatically redirect to here. That original site was the motivation to start this site. That site was the motivation to write a new article every other day. That site is:

Original Linux-Tips

Celebrating a Two-Year Anniversary!

Before starting this article, I did some checking…

The site’s articles total more than 270,000 words. That’s a whole lot of keyboard pounding! I regret nothing!

If you read 250 words per minute, it’d take more than 18 hours to read the entire site, from the first post to the last post! Good luck with that!

The site has shown millions of pages to hundreds of thousands of people. Only about 180 comments have been written, but that’s not bad for a site of this nature.

I don’t even want to guess how many hours I’ve invested in creating, maintaining, and curating this site. Depending on the article, we’re looking at about an hour as an average – counting research, writing, formatting, and editing. Things then get scheduled for automatic publication, ensuring I have a new article every other day.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The article gets shared and I deal with questions, suggestions, and general feedback. I pay attention to search engine optimization, doing my best to rank well in the search engines (I’ve given up on ranking at Bing). I also then pay attention to the ads, though that’s not all that tough. Most of you have blocked ads and not whitelisted my site. (Hint! Hint!)

Today, the site ranks near the top for a whole lot of search terms. Alas, they’re not the most popular search terms – but it’s nice to see the site in the top position for some words and phrases. It might seem like a small thing, but it’s big to me!

Man, if you only knew… 

While the site looks nice and simple, there are a whole lot of changes between this and regular WordPress sites. (WordPress is the software that runs the site, which I use as a CMS more so than a blog.) For example, there are seventy-something plugins. Those all must be maintained.

Further, there are daily backups, a duplicated process with weekly updates being done in triplicate. Fortunately, those are processed more or less automatically, though I do sometimes need to test them to ensure they work. Those have to be monitored.

There’s always something that needs to be done and seldom is there enough time (and motivation). Still, I take a bit of pride in keeping my site secure – and keeping private any information you share with me. Heck, I probably pay even more attention to security because I am responsible for some of your private data.

Wow…

You know, I started this project not knowing where it would lead me. I don’t think I expected to make it two full years without missing a single publication date. I don’t think I expected to make it a full year. I also didn’t expect the results, and those results (including the feedback) are what seems to keep me motivated to keep this project going.

I complain about the cost, but it’s not too expensive. It’d be nice if it paid for its expenses, but that’s fine. I think you can be pretty sure that I’ll find a way to keep the site up and running, regardless of costs. Y’all chewed through a bunch of CDN bandwidth last month, but it looks like it’ll be cheaper this month.

Meh… It’s not too expensive, though this site consumes enough resources to warrant moving it to a VPS. Right now it’s still on shared hosting. I could probably find someone willing to sponsor the site (a hosting company) given that it’s all about Linux. I don’t think I’m going to bother doing so.

All-in-all, I think the majority of articles have done alright. Boy, have I whiffed on a few of them. Fortunately, someone’s always willing to chime in when I’ve made a mistake! (I’m very, very grateful when people do so and I try to make any necessary corrections promptly. I am not perfect, however.)

So…

Yeah…

That’s it… It’s been two ****in’ years! I’m as surprised by this as you are!

Closure:

I think I’ll have a glass of wine or three to celebrate the two-year anniversary. This isn’t the kind of article to bother optimizing for search engines, which is nice. I will kinda proofread it, though lately I’ve been cheating in that department and using Grammarly. That helps and has impacted my writing style – in a good way.

But, perhaps there’s an article in that? Some future articles, perhaps? LOL Maybe I should sign up as an affiliate and then write the article while using affiliate links?!? You never know. Heck, I don’t even know. So, if you did know, you should tell me so that I would know… That sounds reasonable!

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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