Thank You (2009 Edition)
Before January slips away from me, I want to get my annual Thank You post out! Thanks to TheDoc (our resident prolific forums guru) for reminding me.
Milestones
Snippets Launched
The biggest addition to this site in 2009 was the snippets area. It has been a popular resource which makes me happy since that’s the reason this site is around. It’s been slowing down a little, but I’m not too worried about that. You are welcome to contribute snippets of course, to help keep that area bigger and better.
Born and Died
2009 saw the death of “Status”, a project between me and Richard Felix Jr. But also saw the birth of Are My Sites Up? (kinda wild that’s only been one year since AMSU went up). Are My Sites Up was based on yearly pricing, so we are seeing the first round of people renewing their service right now, which is awesome.
Digging Into WordPress
I wrote a book this year with co-author Jeff Starr. As awesome as that was, I consider the blog that goes with it an equal accomplishment. I think I just love blogging.
Speaking
2009 was the first year I spoke at any events. The first being the Front End Design Conference in 2009. Between then and now, I’ve spoken at a number of other cool events. I hope to do some more of that in 2010. I’ll be at the CMS Expo in May, but other than that nothing else lined up.
Design
There were two biggish redesigns in 2009. One in September and one in December. Kind of strangely close together. At the time of this writing I’m calling it v6, and for the record, I rather like it. Probably won’t last long, but even when I do redesign, as you all know, it’s mostly just refinements and alignments rather than crazy huge overhauls. For example, the sidebar has been on the right since day one.
Writing Style
In the last few months I’ve been writing more editorial style posts. I plan to continue doing that as I enjoy it and I enjoy the conversion that is a result of it. I don’t plan to have it take over the site though. I plan to do tutorials and tips/tricks as well.
Chicago
Around the 4th of July I moved from Portland to Chicago. I like Portland the city (and the entire surrounding state) better, but I like Chicago as well and enjoy being closer to home and the Badgers.
Work
I was and still am a full time designer at Chatman Design. We’ve done some pretty fun and successful projects for local clients. We’ve also see some sites deteriorate and one thing we are working on right now is taking one of those and rehauling it. I’m excited to see that launch, if and when we can convince the client that they need it.
Statistics
- The highest-ever RSS feed subscriber count was 39,690.
- There have been 549 posts published, which makes 280 of them this year alone, and probably more than that since I’ve removed some old useless ones.
- 3,105 people have used the CSS-Tricks contact form, which makes 1,885 of them this year. Last year I said I responded to 90%, I’m thinking that’s closer to 75% this year. I really try, but I can’t do individual troubleshooting for the most part anymore.
- I’m up to screencast #79, with #80 and #81 already thought up in my head. That makes only 31 this year, less prolific than last year. I still love doing them but they are the least return on investment thing that I do with my time.
- I spoke at 7 events.
- There are 4,786 members of the forums who have posted 22,183 messages. This has about quadrupled since last year, although the forums see about 1/10 the traffic of the rest of the site. Huge shout out to all the forums guys who help keep that place so ridiculously helpful.
- Search engines provide 39% of traffic, 38% from referring sites, and 21% direct. I think that’s a solid mix.
- The most popular single article of the year was the Auto-Playing Featured Content Slider, responsible for 241,333 pageviews and 1.65% of total traffic.
- The single highest traffic day was August 24th, with 94,037 pageviews from the Moving Boxes post. Apparently, people like slidy JavaScript things.
To Come
Free Stuff, Soon
As part of all this thank you business, I have a plan to give away a whole bunch of books I have amassed and could use a better home. I’m still reigning in all the details. But it’s going to be fun, trust me.
Who Knows!
Again this year, it’s really hard to say what the future holds for 2010. I have less definite plans this year than I did last year, partially on purpose since I always have so much stuff on my plate I don’t like making major plans on top of it all. I am genuinely excited to live through it though.
Most of all, thank you to everyone who visits this site on a regular basis and participates in the community here. The year of 2009 was the first that this site solidified it’s place as not only something I do for fun but also as a part of my life and career. That’s only possible because of people like you.
