Top 10 Blog Posts of 2008

The typical web surfer has a notoriously short attention span, so it’s not at all surprising that the “regular” readers of Beyond the Rhetoric at the beginning of 2008 are a little different than the people who are still reading my blog today. In this way, if you happened to join the BTR community at some time during the last year, you may have missed out on some of the content that was posted before your first visit. Even if you’ve been subscribed this whole time (thanks for the loyalty!), you may have skipped a post or two, because they didn’t seem to tickle your fancy at the time.

Whatever the case, you may be interested to hear what everyone else was reading on Beyond the Rhetoric in 2008. After all, you are what you read and I certainly appreciate that you choose to read my random musings, whether they be about improving your grammar or getting free birthday food. I like to keep things pretty eclectic around these parts.

So, what was everyone reading? According to Google Analytics, the ten most read blog posts from 2008 are:

As you may suspect, the data is a little skewed because it is based on total pageviews over the course of the 2008 calendar year. In this way, posts from the first part of the year have the added advantage of simply existing for a longer period of time. I am glad to see at least one post from later in the year (the one about Rock Band) make the cut, if only by a hair.

Once again, thank you for your continued support and here’s a healthy and happy 2009! Cheers!

10 Comments

dcr on January 3, 2009 at 12:55 pm

Thanks, ahem, for the idea. 😉 I just did my Top 12.

I was kind of surprised to find that Twitter was my third largest traffic source for the year, and I’ve only been on Twitter for 4-1/2 months.

Nick on January 4, 2009 at 1:06 am

I wonder how much the results would differ if you made it a bit more fair, perhaps do a monthly average page views so if a post has been live for 10 months divide the total views by 10 ….

Michael Kwan on January 4, 2009 at 1:08 am

It would be a lot harder for me to figure that into Analytics (especially since it would have to be divided by number of days, not months), unless someone came up with a script that produced that information.
Reply
- Nick on January 4, 2009 at 1:49 am
  
  I totally understand why you don’t do that or account for it, was just saying it would be interesting to see the differences. Don’t look to me to come up with the script 😛
  
  Oh, and interesting change of scenery/background…but your site still looks like crap on IE6!
- Michael Kwan on January 4, 2009 at 12:37 pm
  
  Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on with the CSS in IE6. I got Matt Freedman working on it.
- Matt Freedman on January 5, 2009 at 2:33 pm
  
  I do not condone the use of Internet Explorer 6 for viewing the Internet (in whole or in part – usually in part). As such, any design I make is bound to look horrible in IE6, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
- Nick on January 5, 2009 at 3:13 pm
  
  I agree that IE 6 is not the most desirable way to view things on the internet, however, there are certain situations (such as at work) where I have no choice over which browser I am using. However, using my Analytics account as a benchmark, it seems that about 25% of users also use IE 6. For these reasons, I think sites (at least for the time being) should be compatible 😀
- Derek on January 5, 2009 at 9:39 pm
  
  You need to install Firefox on a thumb drive and get around those silly limitations at work. 😉
- Nick on January 5, 2009 at 11:37 pm
  
  Hmmm, never thought of trying that! I really should though, I run my RSS reader off of it all day long anyway so I may as well try Firefox from there as well 🙂 Thanks for the suggestion!