A milestone, or perhaps even a waymark, was quietly passing back in August. This blog had its fifth birthday! … I have to admit that at the time I didn’t even notice. But now the end of the year is here it seems like a milestone worth marking. Consequently I thought I’d take a look back over those five years and share some of the blog’s stats. The arcane mechanisms behind the scenes are somewhat amorphous and unfathomable – but the system does give me an overview of what’s popular and what’s not, and roughly where in the world the interest is coming from. The map at the bottom of the side bar on the right gives a snap shot of where people are reading the blog, but the behind the scenes “stat-o-meter” gives me a more general picture over the lifespan of the blog, hence I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the Top Ten wheres and whats of the blog so far:
- United States of America
- United Kingdom
- Russia
- France
- Ukraine
- Germany
- Canada
- The Philippines
- China
- Poland
Forlorn and forgotten … Least Read Post:
Waymarksis mostly about travel, books, and history, with a lot of blurring, merging, and overlapping within these categories; but here are my Top Ten personal favourites under those three headings:
I’ve also written quite a few posts relating to my academic research, which can all be found under the research tabat the top of the blog. A couple of posts were inspired by topics which I studied as part of my MA in ‘World History’:
This year marked my 25thanniversary working at the British Museum, and a few of the posts I’ve written over the last five years have focussed on aspects of my day-job:
Similarly some exhibitions I’ve visited have inspired further readings and thoughts which have informed the reviews I’ve written on Waymarks
The Wizard of Oz-like machinery behind the blog also gives me a fleeting glimpse of what search terms have directed people to Waymarks. Quite often these are fairly straightforward, such as “Leonardo da Vinci”, “Horseshoe Crabs”, or “When did WW2 end?”, but sometimes they can be more intriguing and obscure – curiously one of the best (and oddly most frequently recurring) is “Leonardo’s Venusian Man.”
If there are any blog posts which you particularly enjoyed, or if there’s anything you’d like me to write more about, please drop me a line – I’d really appreciate your comments and thoughts.
I’ll be writing more in the New Year, with posts yet to come on topics such as: the Prehistoric Megaliths of Malta; Japanese novelist, Natsume Soseki; Ightham Mote in Kent; Old Saigon & Bicycling through the Mekong Delta; the Red Fort at Tamsui, Taiwan; In Search of Mughal India; the Great Buddha of Lantau; Visiting Teotihuacan, Mexico; and more …