This is one of those housekeeping posts, mostly of interest to me and the perhaps three people out of the entire audience who give a crap about the fiddly things I do to the site. Hello, fellow OCDians!
Anyway:
1. I fiddled with the sidebar slightly today, to put up a promo spot for Redshirts, give The Big Idea its own promo spot, and to delete the links to Clash of the Geeks and the November Advent Calendar. Clash of the Geeks is still accessible through the Scalzi Creative Sampler link, however (and November Advent is of course still in the archives). The “Random Whatever” feature is also still in the sidebar, just down at the bottom. I’m not sure anyone but me played with it. The Redshirts promo will be up at least through my tour dates, i.e., through the end of June. Hey, it’s my site, I can promote my latest book if I want.
2. Speaking of the book tour, the fact I am flitting around the country for much of June means things might be a little slower around here than usual and/or posts will be shorter and of the “Hey! I’m in an airport!” variety. It’s been an eventful May. I’m not sure a somewhat restful June will be a bad thing. I do have a full schedule of Big Idea pieces, so that’s good. And remember that I’m on Twitter a whole hell of a lot.
3. Going back to the site for a moment, it’s possible that later this evening (i.e., after most of all y’all have gone home) I may fiddle with the site a bit more; it appears there are features of this particular template I may have not yet fully exploited and I want to check them out to see if they are things I would find useful. So if you pop by in the evening and it looks like the site has exploded, don’t panic. Everything is under control. I SWEAR.
4. For you statistics fans out there, this month has been far and away the most trafficked month on Whatever since I switched over to WordPress VIP hosting in October ’08 and started using its stats program to track visitors (see my notation on its reliability for tracking actual visitors to Scalzi.com). In fact, if I get 17k visitors today and tomorrow, I’ll crack one million visitors for the month, tracked (which means rather more in reality).
To assure I reach this milestone, here is a picture of a cat.
There, that should do it.
All that and a CAT TOO? I’m gonna explode!
Cat did it for me. Go ahead, track me.
Hubert – Your cat scan has been activated.
I love the Whatever Banner tagline, now.
I like the texture ont he banner. COOL!
I’m on this site everyday, so feel free to track me.
In order to reach that million visitor mark, you’d have to write another ‘controversial’ post (or three) which will make the internet explode again. Of course, you’d be tied to the Mallet for the next couple of days which might be bothersome for you but which is very entertaining for your minions… it passes the time, to be sure.
Also, love the new banner/tagline. *off to share the cat*
The service in this restaurant is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
And yet his plate is clean….
…Not just OCDians — also people who build these things for a living. I’ve yet to build anything on wordpress.com, so these bits and pieces of “administratrivia” tell me things I might not otherwise know.
Yeah, that cat is totally gonna ask for a refund after eating the whole thing. What a cheapscat.
I play with the Random Whatever. Not on a regular basis. Randomly.
vmink: The food in this restaurant is TERRIBLE. And the portions are so small!
Glad the “Random Whatever” link remains. When I am looking for something interesting to read I usually fall back on that button.
Comment sans content, just to nudge the number up towards that 17K.
Given my experience with cats, sometimes it’s best if you don’t get a tip.
Do you track visitors on a per-post basis?
Was it the “Lowest Difficulty Setting” post that generated the most visitors this month?
Has the “Lowest Difficulty Setting” post surpassed the “Being Poor” post for most overall visitors?
Inquiring stats geeks want to know… ;)
I’m another “random Whatever” player, mostly when I’m trying to kill some time.
Yup, another sad Random Whateveree here.
And of course the cat is throwing a hissy because of the laggardly service — where is that second (third, fourth…) portion?!
Maybe you could add a random cat link so us hardcore types don’t have to waste time randomly eyeballing cat free posts. It’s little things like that which show you really care…
You can take the random whatever link away from my cold dead fingers.
Random whatever took me to a nutbag childless entry replaced by the Scalzi deadpage message with a nice picture of a zombie attacking a bald guy. But also noticed that the dying pear tree in your front yard looked very nice back in 2007. Time well spent.
I LOVE random Whatever! Quite seriously, I had to give it up for Lent because I was spending so much time on it. I use it again now but not for the hour-at-a-time that I used to. (Now, where is that life I left around here somewhere…??)
Yep, I love the random whatever too. I occaisionally get some dead time at work, and I’ll flip through a bunch of them.
Oooo, I love Stevie’s idea. Random Cat pictures!
Are you absolutely sure that the cats had nothing to do with the sad demise of Gummy and Nemo? As in scaring them to death. Or possibly staring them to death. Just wondering, that’s all…
I was actually just playing with the Random Whatever feature just the other day. Since I have the world’s worst memory, I can re-read and enjoy posts multiple times. I had a lot of fun just reading random entries. I’m glad you didn’t delete it.
You were writing here for years before I found out about it, so if I stop by and there’s nothing new to read, sometimes I’ll go for the Random Whatever. If I hit an entry I’ve read, I just click again.
That is an excellent kitty picture. I’m glad I skimmed through the whole post.
I love the Random Whatever! That said I have the link bookmarked on the iPod Touch so as long as the functionality remains I don’t care where on the sidebar it is. Not a stats geek, but I am also curious how views of “Lowest Difficulty Setting” compare to “Being Poor”. I suspect that “Being Poor” is higher, if only because it has been around so much longer, but it would be interesting to see how quickly it is catching up.
CHANGE? OH GOD. CHANGE IS…GOOD. RIGHT? CHANGE IS EXCITING. IS IT GETTING DIZZY IN HERE? I THINK I’M HYPERVENTILATING. [hyperventilates] [comes to some time later] Oh. A cat picture! I like the cat pictures, I do.
Still patiently waiting for the return of Whateverettes. Patiently! T’Pah!