Greg Wilson's Ramblings

Today, my 10 month old blog received its 100,000th view.  I know that there are many bloggers that get this many views every week, but for me, this is a fun milestone considering I only received 10 hits per day during the first month (thanks mom!).  My blog now averages between 600 and 1200 hits per day now and is steadily increasing so I expect to reach the 200,000 milestone fairly soon.

Here are a few things that I have learned from analyzing 10 months of traffic for my 107 blog posts:

• Learning resources are very popular:
  • Adobe LiveCycle ES – an intro video for developers – One of my most popular blog posts (over 7000 views).  I receive many referrals from the  Adobe LiveCycle Developer Center where it has been featured for several months.  LiveCycle ES interest is growing and accelerating.  The latest version, LiveCycle ES Update 1, is doing well.
  • LiveCycle ES vs LiveCycle DS vs BlazeDS – clearing up the confusion – This post also receives consistent daily traffic.   I guess a lot of people are as confused as I was!
  • Flex 3 Component Explorer – a must for Flex beginners – the popularity of this one surprised me.  The component explorer ships with the Flex SDK and Flex Builder but obviously many people haven’t discovered it.   It’s a fantastic resource for learning Flex.
  • Flex SDK 3.1, Learning Flash, AIR, CF and other new content posted today to Adobe Developer Connection – I have highlighted new content on the Adobe Developer Connection several times, and each time, it is popular.   The ADC team is doing an awesome job. You’ll find developer resources for just about every Adobe technology including AIR, Flex, LiveCycle, etc.
    
  • Flex Cookbook – now on Adobe Developer Center – Technical “Cookbooks” are popular.  I use them often.  We all like learning by looking at examples.
    
  • 5+ hours of free Flex training videos now online… – Every time I point people to new training video content for Flex or AIR, the post gets good immediate traffic.
    
  • 21 Flex Videos from 360Flex San Jose 2008 – This recent article was a hit.  We all got to attend 360Flex San Jose virtually!   I recently added 4 more video links and will be adding more shortly.
    
  • “AIR for Flash Developers” now at Lynda.com – great learning resource for many technologies
    
  • “AIR for Flex Developers” on Lynda.com
  • Adobe AIR books now in stores! – based on the traffic for this article, a lot of people are just as excited as I am to see AIR books going mainstream.
  • Video – See Flash 10, Flex 4, AIR 1.5, FXG, Thermo, Degrafa and more – I always enjoy helping spread the news about new products and features.  This video covered a lot of ground!
  • My recent posts on adding auto update capabilities to AIR applications in 3 easy steps and using a good install badge for AIR programs were both very popular.  Again, clarification and samples are always a hit.
• My digital photography posts always get good traffic, especially when I put in the work to clarify confusing topics such as my most popular photography article, Nikon D700, D300, D3, D2Xs, D80, D60, D40 – confused?
• I was amazed at the thousands of hits that my Windows to Mac OS conversion article received – Why I switched to a Mac after 20 years of Windows PC.  Evidently, a lot of people are thinking about a similar switch?

I’ve averaged about 2 posts per week (107 posts over 10 months), a challenging pace when I first started blogging, but it got much easier as time passed.

I plan to continue being a resource for people new to LiveCycle, Flex, AIR, etc. and will continue to try and summarize and clarify what can sometimes be a confusing landscape.   I also plan to post more videos, including several self-shot video interviews, etc.  I was recently armed with a video camera and plan to take advantage of it.  My focus will be primarily on people learning LiveCycle, Flex and AIR so others can learn from their experience.

Thank you for reading!