Happy Birthday #9 – State of the Blog

Another year passes and of Dice and Dragon turns nine. As I do every year I like to take a look back at the year and put down a few goals for the upcoming year, not just for the blog but also for my gaming life.

This year saw my offline world continue to inject Murphy in my writing endeavors but I still managed to put up a few posts and put a new coat of paint on the blog. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done any type of face lift on the site so I thought I would start with determining a color scheme and since the title of the blog as dragon it in I thought I would play on the color red. I hope you like it.

Let me also take a moment to thank all of you for continuing to support the blog by stopping by to see what’s going on and even participate in the comments. The post count may be low, there may be the occasional site issue, but you keep coming back, and I appreciate it. You, my readers, are the reason I do this, to give just a little back to the community and hope to improve my gaming just a little bit in the process.

So where did I end up against last year’s goals?

1. Post more frequently. Unfortunately I still haven’t managed to hit the mark, and this year actually saw fewer posts than last year. I had a total of nine, one fewer than the previous year and still off my goal of 52. This will be a focus again this year.
2. Increase blog traffic by 10%. I missed this one as well, (based on the statistics provided by Google), and if fact dropped off by nearly 13%. To be honest I’m a bit confused on this as the statistics that WordPress provides me shows a slight uptick in overall traffic. I’m considering doing away with the Google Analytic code on the site and sticking with just the WordPress stats, not because of the results this year but they also correlate them with when posts go live on the site, a really nice touch. (I also realize that there are many who would prefer Google not track their every movement as well.)
3. Host a blog carnival. This one was nailed as I hosted not one but two carnivals this past year. I stepped in at the last minute to help out in March with, The GM Binder, and then followed it up in October with, Things that go bump in the night. The latter was very well received and marked my second carnival during that month and has been by far my best carnival event to date.
4. Start a new campaign. I missed this one again, but there has been some movement on this goal. I started talking up the possibility of a new campaign and have even had someone state they would be interested in playing if I get the group going. It’s not really the goal I had set for myself but at least I can say I at least started working on it.

Goals for 2015

So, now that we’ve looked back at how things went last year, it’s time to set a few goals for the upcoming year.

1. Post frequency. I am going to continue to set the bar at a post a week for a total of 52 for the year. Will I hit it this coming year? I’m not sure but I can’t bring myself to drop the goal to a lower number.
2. Increase blog traffic 10%. As in years past I going to set a goal to increase the traffic to the blog, but unlike the past I’m going state it will be based on the WordPress statistics. To be honest given that the numbers just don’t line up I have to make the call and I like the built in nature of the WordPress package so I’m going in that direction.
3. Participate in two blog carnivals. Yes, I participated in two carnivals this year but I was the host of both and this goal is about participation, not hosting. To his this goal I need to write a post in support of a carnival at least once.
4. Start a new campaign. I’m going to continue to work on this one. This year the conversations started and there seemed to be some interest, next year the goal is to get it up and off the ground, with the setting put in place and with any luck a few characters generated.

So there you have it, the annual “birthday post” as I like to call it.

Do you have any goals set for next year? Did you set any for this year and if so, how did you do? Why not share in the comments or link back to a post on your site?

May your dice roll well.