Writing a blog it’s interesting to see which posts seem to generate the most interest. WordPress and if I remember rightly Blogger give you information daily on views to your blog. How many views today, how many visitors, where people have come from and what if any links they have clicked on.
Certain posts appear time and time again. Here on Oleanna the most popular post is about Thwaite Mills. This post usually gets at least one viewing a day and has stacked up 1442 viewings since I wrote it in March last year and in April this year it was viewed 151 times. This post was one of the first after we moved the blog to WordPress.
Thwaite Mills is an interesting place and very much worth a visit either by car or boat, although there is limited mooring. Here’s a link if you are interested. I suspect many views come from Google searches and not just to catch up on what we’ve been up to.
Lilllian’s blog has always been popular for the post regarding the Magic Roundabout in Hemel Hempstead, 170 views through the years since 2015. A small number of views in comparison. I think the photo of the road sign has been clicked on more times.
Lillian’s blog has had no posts posted since we handed her over to her new owners back at the end of June 2017. She normally has a trickle of views each week and sits low on the Waterways Ranking Site. So when I got a message from WordPress last week saying that her viewings were Booming! I was interested to see why.
Blimey they were Booming! On the 16th November there were 605 views by 476 visitors. What the!?! With 390 referrals from Google in a single day. Two posts were being viewed in particular, both regarding Emily Blagg.
Emily Blagg lived in Newark from 1887, she ran her own businesses, buying into a brick company and becoming a property developer, building houses for the local work force. She also built the local Kinema which was followed by The Palace Theatre. She then moved into producing metal pipework.
Whilst we were in Newark during winter 2015/16, I did a bit of research into her and we visited several of the houses she’d built. The post Emily Blagg and The Polish has always been a popular post, but having 581 views in November out of the total of 629?!
I’ve had a look around Google to see if this November marks any anniversary for Emily Blagg but can’t find anything obvious. Maybe the interest was more to do with the Polish War graves, but pictures of Emily’s houses had been clicked on. Maybe there is a school or college doing research on Emily? Or maybe my Emily Blagg got confused with a more modern day lady who had hit the lime light for some other reason? Who knows? If you do please let me know.
All this interest in our old blog meant that Lillian gradually over the last week rose up the Waterway Ranking Site. I think she reached position 11 overall, beating this blog and many others. The 581 views are not reflected on the site as views are recorded in a different way than those on WordPress. Now that a week has passed since the mass interest Lillian’s blog will drop back down and go back to lurking towards the bottom of the ranks again. She’s already reached no 27.
Apologies for this post, but as you know I do like numbers.
Usually there is someone researching something when you suddenly get a boost in your views. Happens to me all the time.
Here is a number conundrum – If a cat is feeding 6 kittens, how many pouches of food to how many poops will there be for mum?
We haven’t got to the kittens pooping stage yet so that question will come up later for you!
4 to 3?
1 to 1!
She’s on 6-7 sachets a day so my bin is filling quickly!!
Hope cats protection pay for her food. Tilly only has 1 and some biscuits, but she hasn’t got 6 hungry young uns chomping for milk
Yes they do, but of course fundraising this year has virtually been wiped out, so it’s a challenge for sure! We cover a large area and only have a small team of volunteers, so keep pushing our limited fundraising, Amazon Wishlist stuff. I’d pay for it anyway for her, there’s no way she’d go hungry!
The Hemel Hempstead magic roundabout wasn’t the first, i think Swindon pre-dates it and is actually scarier as there are less features on the road to guide you round. Once you are used to them they are good as you can go around any way you like, even turning right if you want exit 5 or 6
According to Wikipedia there are actually five in the UK
Have to say I’m really rather thankful I’ve never had to drive round one of these. But then again I haven’t driven in 3 maybe even 4 years, the prospect is quite scary
I found this very interesting. I know there’s a lot of interest in old theatres and cinemas but I don’t think it would generate this. Good for Emily, she sounds like a very enterprising woman.
Best wishes
Christine
Christine Geraghty Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Glasgow
‘Casting for the Public Good: BAME Casting in British Film and Television in the 2010s’ Adaptation, apaa004, https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apaa004 Published: 20 March 2020
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