However, since I understand that many people are bored by numbers I figured that I’d just lay out some of the statistics that are available regarding JerseySmarts.com. I’m not talking about hits (though I’ll include them below), but rather other somewhat interesting statistics…

Since I merged JerseySmarts.com with Joe’s Journal in November 2009, WordPress has stopped over 140,000 spam comments from being uploaded to the blog. Some 34,000 of those spam comments have been received in the last two months.

There are over 2,100 real comments from fine readers like yourself scattered throughout JerseySmarts.com. Thanks!

As of today, there are 1,951 entries on JerseySmarts.com. A few months ago I read somewhere that some guy won an award for having written the most original blog entries or some such crap. I don’t remember how many entries he had actually written, but I do remember that his number was much lower than mine – I definitely have that guy beat!

Since the merger of JerseySmarts.com and Joe’s Journal back in November 2009, this blog has received over 156,000 hits. While that’s not bad, it’s not where I’d like it to be. Although I guess some better news is that 2010 had more hits than 2009. And, so far, 2011 is on pace to increase the total number of annual hits by over 40% year-over-year. Again, that’s not bad for a personal blog of this size.

There you go – some quick, harmless facts about JerseySmarts.com.

Some of you might be interested to know that I’ve been working on a lot of the behind the scenes elements of this website since our one year anniversary of merging back in November. Most of the stuff that I’ve been doing is boring, but some of it might be interesting to at least a few of my readers. So here is a short list of what I’ve been up to lately.

• Random HTML Updates: As always, I am obsessive about the cleanliness of the code that is used to create JerseySmarts.com. The WordPress people are great at releasing frequent updates to the blog’s core structure, but I make a great deal of changes and modifications to that structure that I am always going back to tinker with and clean up. I told you this was boring, right?
• Automatic “Strong” Links: This one is really a personal preference, but I like to have the ability to control the appearance of the links in my entries. WordPress is very flexible when it comes to this, but sometimes it is not very clear on how you manipulate the code for these options on the back end. I’ve had some success with a quick, easy workaround on some of the other WordPress-based websites that I own so I decided to institute them here and it has been working very well. Which brings me to the next point…
• Amending Older Posts & Comments: When I merged both sites last year, I brought everything from both sites over to the new system. As those of you who work with me on websites know, I’m a stickler for maintaining content – I hate deleting ANYTHING from a website! However, I do understand the need for content to be correct. To this end, I spent some time the other day amending all of my old comments on this blog to reflect the new URL of JerseySmarts.com instead of the old URL for Joe’s Journal which was based off of the now defunct thebalrogslair.com website. That took some time… And while I was at it, I also amended my buddy Eddie’s comments to reflect his new blog URL as well as my other friend Martin’s comments to reflect his new blog URL. Having the proper URL out there is cyberspace is important to generating hits and interest in your website – you can’t let that stuff fall by the wayside.

There have been a few other things that I’ve done in the last few weeks that really begin to dig into the minutiae of operating a website so I won’t bore you with them. Just know that on those days when there is not a new entry for you to read, chances are I am working on something else behind the scenes that is, in the long run, just as important as new content!

• Subscription: Using the sign-up sheet on the right side of the website, you can now “sign-up” for JerseySmarts.com and receive regular mailings from this blog. The mailings will be general recaps and links to previous posts over the last week or two. Not sure how I want to handle that yet.
• Related Posts: At the end of each individual post page you’ll find a bunch of stuff. Under the comments box you’ll see something that says, “More On This Topic From JerseySmarts.com.” That area should contain some recent posts that match the topic of the one that you’re currently reading.
• Random Quote: A little bit underneath the subscription form you’ll find a random quote generator. There are only a dozen or so quotes in the system at this point, but this little widget allows you to flip through whichever posts are in the system without surfing to a new page. There will be new quotes added periodically.
• Search Engine Welcome. Those guests that make their way to JerseySmarts.com by way of a search engine will now see an in-page welcome box directly under the headline of the individual entry on which they land. It asks them to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed or for them to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. this site based on where they came from.

Hopefully, some of these additions and changes will help to make your browsing experience a bit more enjoyable. Additional suggestions and comments are always welcome!