Housekeeping

Yes, housekeeping. But before my friends get excited, this is housekeeping issues for the blog, not elsewhere.

Sometime this week, I hope to get to setting up a new template for the blog. I decided when I started that I would never include advertising, so I can hardly imagine why I would want to leave all that unused space on each side of the screen. Time to spread out and stretch a bit! (I hope I find something pleasant to use…suggestions welcome!)

The other thing I want to talk about is statistics. I've never been in this for the numbers – hence the lack of celebrity gossip and naked men, I suppose. My original goal was to get out and talk about my life as a gay man living with HIV. I'm happy to see the large variety of people who have come to see my blog, but not driven to do an analysis of how long they spent on the page and such…things that are largely more useful if you're hoping to make a living from it. Not my case. I have had trouble with the counters, though. I like the revolving globe thing, but I only installed it last year, so it's giving a minimized perspective on my numbers. I've tried a couple of other counters that seem to have gone off the rails from time to time. For my own use, I'm counting the pageviews that Blogger gives me (closing on 48,500 as of Sunday morning, and up to about 1,800 per month), and going to Google Analytics when I feel particularly geeky. I may yet play with other options on the counter thing, but we'll see about that.

I have adopted the practice of promoting my posts, too, via Twitter (automatically posted to Facebook). Three tweets per post, preferably at different times of the day, and I try to make sure that one of the three is a haiku, apparently not really following the rules of the form beyond the syllable count! Just to amuse and challenge myself. And I follow the clicks from my tweets and Facebook posts using bit.ly to shorten the URL, which gives me another set of stats that, of course, do not concord with the Blogger hits. Whatever.

In terms of subject matter, I hope I can be as complete as my life. I started making sure this year to write about every film I see with my friends. This is about making sure we remember what we saw and making sure that I write regularly, but the film-going for me is also about making sure that I don't retreat within myself and my apartment, which would be too easy. The challenge to write about every film has been quite effective in getting me to write – not quite the "Thirty Rants Hath November" challenge from 2011, but much more sustained and sustainable.

I'm a bit worried that my content has gone a little light on the HIV content, as I am writing that for Positive Lite and have been worried about rehashing content at the same time as I am rather busy with my actual work (also in HIV). You can see how that might start to take up too much room at the same time as it is absenting itself my my original vehicle for self-expression. I have decided to publish my Positive Lite articles simultaneously on this blog, with a link to the other place in case there are more fun or aggravating comments there. That starts tomorrow, and I only write once every week or two there, so you'll still be drowning in more movies than HIV…the HIV just won't be undetectable here as it is in my blood (*groan*).

I don't get a ton of comments, but I did put in a comment approval step because I got a few of those spammy commercial promotion things that I really didn't like. I do publish respectful comments that diverge from my point of view, but I also usually respond to them. Since it's my space, I always get the last word! (Very satisfying – I have to recommend blogging if only for that!)

So enough of this self-indulgence and back to the usual self-indulgence of spouting off my thoughts about this, that and the other.