A Couple Changes
I’m going to talk through a couple of changes I’ve made over the last couple of days on this site.
Disabling Analytics
I turned off the analytics that came with Ghost v6 a few months ago. At first, I liked them. I could see what people actually liked reading. I could see where readers were coming from, or at least what country they were reading from. I could see the little spikes whenever someone would share one of my posts. I liked those things.
Then there’s the other side. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of worrying about page clicks, of what was working and if I should pigeonhole myself into that kind of content. I didn’t want to become a one- or two-trick pony, as I feel that makes my writing a little less authentic and minimizes who I am on this site. I want to be me, bottom line.
I also didn’t like how much I could see bot traffic. Like, why are Chinese bots liking one post about a trail I walked in June, constantly keeping it in my top 5 posts? That’s just weird and creepy behavior, and I think I’m better off not being aware of it. I’d like to block bot and scraper traffic altogether, but that’s probably a losing battle for as long as I post to the open web. So, bots, do your thing, just shut the fuck up about it.
Updated About Page
For the most part, my About page is the same. What’s different is I explain why I’m doing this in the first place, as I feel blogs are heavily important and will be vital as social media continues to enshittify itself. People will want alternatives, and I would love nothing more for my close friends to start one of these things themselves. I still have a dream of a list of RSS feeds of my friends, all in chronological order, full of their thoughts on whatever they’re interested in. Otherwise, I just cleaned things up. You can check that updated page out here: