Grumpy Rumblings 2023 Year in Blogging

January 1, 2024 — nicoleandmaggie

Can’t believe another year has passed.  Let’s look at some stats!

Traffic is down again compared to last year.  Posts are up a bit (206 this year compared to 203)), and comments are also down.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2023:

Four of these are from 2023 and recent!  Liberty Tabletop has come back after not being on the leaderboard in 2022, but otherwise we seem to have disappeared from search algorithms.  It looks like views were driven by DC1’s college outcomes and my kind of cruddy year in terms of larger family stuff and career.

According to our stats, here’s another five of the most popular posts from 2023:

More traffic on the college/my miserable year posts.  And one about a vacation we may never take…

Top referring sites were (same sites but natural scientist and academic jungle swapped places– particularly remarkable because only bardiac and delagar post regularly!):

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.  Germany is inching up even more.

Our most commented post was Delurk for us today!  (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” which is now a tab on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to scroll down and change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you, again, previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for what appears to be all time.  So what I’m doing is looking at how many pages of comments each person in the top 6 (which is all they show) gave this year (each page has 20 comments) :( These were the most active commenters of all time, sorted by the number of comments in the past year, but I may be missing newer active commenters or regulars who have changed the email they login with over the years.

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 8 pages
2.  CG 7 pages
3.  First Gen American 5.5 pages
4.  Debbie M/debomill 5.5 pages
5. Jenny F. Scientist 5.5 pages
6.  delagar 4 pages

Revanche is the winner this year, but CG is starting to sneak up.

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate the proceeds from our most recent month’s sales (plus a bump because amazon sales are really small these days).   Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

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Delurk for us today!

January 25, 2023 — nicoleandmaggie

We haven’t done a delurking post in YEARS.  Like, maybe 10 years?

We miss our lost commenters.  We love our current commenters.  We wonder about the new people who have been reading but haven’t necessarily joined in the conversation.

So, in the interest of increasing conversation, we’re declaring this Grumpy Rumblings Delurking Day.

If you’re a reader of ours but not a regular commenter, say hi, and, if you like, tell us a little about yourself.  If that’s intimidating, then tell us what you like about our blog or what you’d like to see more of.  If that seems self-serving on our parts, then just say hi (and we’ll understand)!

If the problem is thinking up a screen name, we recommend choosing a font name.  Here’s a list, though you may of course choose something else.

There’s no captcha code, so delurk now!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: , , . 85 Comments »

Grumpy Rumblings 2022 Year in Blogging

January 2, 2023 — nicoleandmaggie

Can’t believe another year has passed.  Let’s look at some stats!  I will note that some of these stats may be undercounts because wordpress stats has been wonky much of December this year and hasn’t been recording any thing it’s been tracking for some weeks.

Traffic is down compared to last year.  Posts are down a bit (202 this year compared to 209)), and comments are also down.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2022:

Four of these are from 2022 (Last year only two were from 2021!) and, for the first time, the post from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment not only isn’t #1, it isn’t in the top 10. We have lost the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding. (It still got 480 views though.)  Some of our other common standbys are still in the top 10 though (liberty tabletop review, percent vs. percentage point, our parenting philosophy, etc.)

According to our stats, here’s another five of the most popular posts from 2022:

Ok, what I’m getting from this is either I have had a really bad year OR there are suddenly a lot more people hate reading us and a lot fewer search engines finding us.  Are you hate reading or just sympathetic? Was my year really as terrible as it seems from traffic? Let us know!

Top referring sites were (same sites but slightly different order from last year):

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.  Germany is inching up.

Our most commented post was Add me to the numbers of people who got covid for the first time this past month (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” which is now a tab on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to scroll down and change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for what appears to be all time.  So what I’m doing is looking at how many pages of comments each person in the top 6 (which is all they show) gave this year (each page has 20 comments) :( These were the most active commenters of all time, sorted by the number of comments in the past year, but I may be missing newer active commenters or regulars who have changed the email they login with over the years.

1.  Debbie M 9 pages
2.  Revanche@agaishanlife 9 pages
3.  First Gen American 7 pages
4.  CG 6 pages
5.  Alice 4 pages
6.  Bogart 3 pages

Debbie M has a bunch more on that 9th page than Revanche, but it was pretty close.

Yay Debbie M!  This means you get to tell us where to donate the proceeds from our most recent month’s sales (plus a bump because amazon sales are also way down).    Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Debbie M in the comments.  :)

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Summer Break, links to old money posts

June 27, 2022 — nicoleandmaggie

Nicole and Maggie discuss budgeting

Some early popular money posts

The Money tag

#1 used to have a mortgage

Do you have any favorite money posts?  Any money questions for Ask the Grumpies?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: , . 6 Comments »

Grumpy Rumblings 2021 year in Blogging

January 3, 2022 — nicoleandmaggie

Traffic is again a little up compared to last year.  Posts are down a bit (209 this year compared to 210(!)), and comments are also up.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2021:

Two of these are from 2021 (Last year none of them were from 2020!) and, of course, the #1 post is still from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment. We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular posts from 2021:

  • I am not ok
  • Why I don’t want to list my pronouns
  • RBOC from March 1, 2021 (I think this is a first for an RBOC)  This one has a lot of complaining that is also in I am not ok above.  People like complaining!
  • Link Love from Jan 2, 2021 (I think this is a first for a Link Love).  See above comment about people loving complaining.
  • DH’s Delta Trainer/Co-Pilot Review  (DH is still going strong with this and would 100% recommend if you want to get into shape and have time to do so– if there is interest, I can do a post updating.)

Top referring sites were (no change from last year!):

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.

Our most commented post was Why I don’t want to list my pronouns (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” and is no longer on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time. :( These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 60
2.  Debbie M 36
3.  First Gen American 30
4.  Three way tie for 4th:  mnitabach, omdg, Matthew D. Healy 27

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

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Grumpy Rumblings 2020 year in Blogging

December 30, 2020 — nicoleandmaggie

Traffic is actually a little up compared to last year.  Scalzi noted this trend too on his Whatever, so maybe blog traffic is generally up with the pandemic?  Posts are up a bit (210 this year, counting this one), and comments are also up.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2020:

I think these probably show an increase in people finding our blog via googling and perhaps a decrease in conversations across blogs (or twitter) bringing in traffic.  None of these are from 2020 (which is a first– usually there’s at least one popular post for the year) and the #1 post is still from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment. We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular posts from 2020:

Top referring sites were:

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.

Our most commented post was Spoiled rich white boys:  Sophomore English hasn’t changed in 60 years (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” and is no longer on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time. :( These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 45
2.  Jenny F. Scientist 44
3.  Debbie M 37
4.  omdg 32
5.  Steph 29

I think this is a first time for Steph on the leader board!

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: , , , . 22 Comments »

10 years of blogging

July 14, 2020 — nicoleandmaggie

Today marks our 10 year blogiversary!  And it’s a Tuesday!  (Will there be a Wednesday post?  Probably not this week…  Still fishing for compliments…)

It started with a grumble.

Early posts had a lot of octopus and hot library guy memes (not together though!)  We started with a lot of small frequent posts, posting daily or more!

Our deliberately controversial posts were especially popular.

We got a lot of readers from the Get Rich Slowly fora.

But times have changed… while we post regularly, it’s only on a M/W/F/Saturday schedule, and not daily.  We still have Money Mondays .  We used to alternate Fridays Ask the Grumpies with Google Questions, but we now get more Ask the Grumpies questions and Google has made it harder to find search terms from wordpress that come to our blog, so we mostly only do the advice column.  Saturdays are for link love.  Wednesdays are for everything else.

We used to be a bit more balanced with food and book etc. posts coming at regular intervals, but now we’re generally at most a week ahead of blogging instead of months, at least for Wednesday posts.  That leads to a bit more bunching of posts, I think.  Life has gotten busy!

Blogging is correlated with me adding too many parentheticals to my writing (like this one).

How long will we keep going?  I don’t know!  Occasionally it seems more like a chore than a hobby, but we’d miss our readers (especially you, yes YOU), and sometimes it’s really useful to be able to just ask the world something to see what falls out.

Do you have a favorite Grumpy Rumblings post?  What do you hope to see in the future?  Praise and congratulate us!  We are totally fishing for compliments!

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Grumpy Rumblings 2019 year in Blogging

January 8, 2020 — nicoleandmaggie

Traffic continues its downward trend.  Again, blog traffic in general is down, and we haven’t really been doing deliberately controversial posts, we’re not on twitter, etc.  I think we’ve been engaging less with the blogosphere as a whole in terms of commenting on others’ blogs (and we’re off some blogrolls that we used to be on, though I’m not sure why this year… we don’t seem to have any obviously controversial posts or commenting drama this year).  We have a record low number of posts this year with 198 (previous low was 210).  And I suspect our posts just haven’t been as interesting.  Comments are down which I entirely attribute to Chacha1 being MIA (you are missed, chacha!), number of likes is about the same as last year.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2018:

I think these probably show an increase in people finding our blog via googling and perhaps a decrease in conversations across blogs (or twitter) bringing in traffic.  Again, only two of these are from 2019 and the #1 post is still from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment. We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular posts from 2019:

Top referring sites were:

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & India came next.

Our most commented post was things you don’t actually have to do (unless you want to) (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” and is no longer on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time. :( These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

1.  Debbie M 46
2.  Michael N Nitabach 45
3.  Revanche@agaishanlife 43
4.  First Gen American 39
5.  bogart 33

Great to see bogart back in action!  And I think this is a first time for comrade Nitabach on the leader board.

Yay Debbie M!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Debbie M in the comments.  :)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: , , . 16 Comments »

Belated Grumpy Rumblings 2018 Year in Blogging

January 21, 2019 — nicoleandmaggie

Late because #1 is overburdened with service and teaching this year and has been sick and just has not had time for much of anything.   She does not like being in charge of everything, which I guess is what happens when you gain seniority and other people in seniority retire or become department chair so you end up being asked to do the service they did before they retired or got tapped for chair.  :(

Traffic continues its downward trend.  Again, blog traffic in general is down, and we haven’t really been doing deliberately controversial posts, we’re not on twitter, etc.  Or maybe we’re just not sparking joy for people and getting weeded because of Kondomania.  Comments are about the same, number of likes has more than doubled.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2018:

I think these probably show an increase in people finding our blog via googling and perhaps a decrease in conversations across blogs (or twitter) bringing in traffic.  Again, only one of these is from 2018 and the #1 post is still from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment. We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular posts from 2018:

Top referring sites were:

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & India came next.

Our most commented post was DH got a 10% raise and now we’re really going to have some obnoxious money posts (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” and is no longer on site stats)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time. :( These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 67
2.  rose 46
3.  gasstationwithoutpumps 44
4.  Debbie M 39
5.  Leah 38

Man, Chacha totally fell off the map this year!

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: , , . 17 Comments »

Grumpy Rumblings 2017 Year in blogging

January 3, 2018 — nicoleandmaggie

Traffic is down again this year. This is no doubt a combination of many factors, the primary being that most blog traffic is down (or at least that’s true according to Scalzi), but also a lack of deliberately controversial posts, neither of us having twitter accounts, and less of us interacting with the blogosphere.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2017.

Only one of these is from 2017! The #1 post is from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment.  We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular 2017 posts:

Saving isn’t necessarily “easier” for people who save more: A deliberately controversial rant
Liberty Tabletop Review: We bought cutlery
Ask the grumpies: How to decide to leave/stay in a tenured position
There really is a big difference between comfortable middle class income and upper middle class income
Help me with DC2’s lunch!

The top referring sites in 2017 were:

  1. ana-begins.blogspot.com
  2. bardiac.blogspot.com
  3. academic-jungle.blogspot.com
  4. something-remarkable.blogspot.com
  5. blogger.com

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & United Kingdom came next.

The most commented on post in 2017 was What I don’t like about our kitchen

Ugh, I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time.  :(  These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

If I search comments, chacha has 10 pages worth in 2016 and Leah also has 10 pages (Revanche has 8).  I’m too lazy to count them all up and chacha won last year, so let’s go with Leah for this year’s most comments winner.

Yay Leah!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Leah in the comments.  :)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: , . 11 Comments »
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