500

According to Blogger, this is my 500th blog entry.

That's a whompin' load 'o writing, seems to me. Hard to imagine it, really.

I started this blog using some software that no longer exists and whose name I can no longer recall. Then, I moved it to Rapidweaver, when I re-did my whole website, using the same. But Rapidweaver has mostly crashed and burned on me. And so, a few years back, I switched over to Blogger. It was, frankly, a heck of a lot of work to transfer everything over. But I'm glad to have the archive now.

Facebook definitely cut in to blog readership. Back in "B.F.E" (Before the Facebook Era) I had several entries that got into the multiple-thousands-of-hits.

The most-read entry of all-time was this one, after the Dallas Mavericks heartbreaking loss in the 2006 NBA Playoffs. The pre-Blogger entry was read something like 25,000 times, or something ridiculous like that. Two of the radio shows on The Ticket mentioned it. It was reposted at several nations sports blogs. And it led to the creation of my sport-blog nickname: "The Bitter P1"

If you'd ask to to guess what my most-read blog would be, I never in a million years would have guessed that one. Go figure.

The second most read entry of all time was this one, about my song, "Prairie Chapel Road," and my trips to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas. I was fortunate enough to have something like 7,000 people stop by to read my thoughts about the experience. 3,000-plus folks downloaded my song, in those weeks of August, 2005. You can still find it at the link.

Like I said, there's been a dramatically stark decline in blog readership, since the advent of Facebook. The only other blog to crack 1,000 hits since Facebook was one I wrote just last week, ironically. Every other blog in the list that follows is below 1,000 hits, though many not by much. Here's the rest of the top reads, in order:

The Martyr of Black Friday

Please Do Not Listen to Pat Robertson

The Word and Our Words

Spiritual Reflections on "Occupy Wall Street"

The Parable of the Talent Explained

Almost all of these are less than a year old. Which seems strange to me...like there was some kind of lull in there. (Maybe people are reading blogs again? Or, perhaps Blogger has a really crappy archive-stats feature?)

Anyway, there you have it. Although it was a TON of work to "port" everything over to Blogger, now and then I gaze jealously over at WordPress blogs and think, "they always have more comments..."

Its that true? (That's how it seems...)

Anyway, five hundred entries is perhaps also a good time to remind you that the blog has several major categories (and a ton of minor "tags").

With multiple categories, and five hundred entries to choose from, there's a lot to read if you're so inclined. Learn about the categories here.

Thanks so much to anybody who ever stops by, even if just once.

Thanks to all who take the time to leae a comment or share on Facebook. I'm always deeply grateful to find that some of these thoughts actually help folks.

The writing almost always helps me. So, I'd probably keep doing that, even if nobody ever read it.

But I'm glad some yall do. Read, that is.

Thanks again....EF

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