A Flemm Blog

After the switch from www.aflemm.blogspot.com to www.aflemm.com, viewership noticeably increased, which was exactly the goal.  With an nice and easy domain name, we (yes, we) can tell everyone we know about the blog, and they will be able to remember it.

Of the last 500 page-loads, 4% were from the states, with 96% being from Canada.  So a warm welcome to our slightly dimmer southern friends.

Let's talk a little about the sidebar.  It's been growing and evolving ever since its inception, so I'll highlight a few main points.  The first things I put there were the 'Featured Music', and 'Featured Blogs'.  The former gives you iTunes links to bands/artists that I'm currently enjoying; and the latter gives you a way to get to Brandon's blog (as well as see the other things I'm reading).

Don't worry, although this is a new paragraph I'm not done with the sidebar yet.  Once the number of 'archived' posts became rather substantial, I realized that a number of our new readers (who you have been busy recruiting) won't ever get to reading some of the earlier posts.  Because I am proud of a good deal of those posts, I created the 'Featured Posts' widget in the sidebar.  This gives me a way to keep our new readers aware of the fun we were having back in the early days.

An even more recent addition to the sidebar is the set of YouTube videos.  At the moment, they are the most recent videos from the sXePhil channel (I think he's great), but that may change.  You may notice while viewing these videos that at the top and bottom there are ads.  If you feel like being a nice person, give those ads a click.  Even if you don't care about what they're selling, it will make me a bit of money.  So just to be a nice person, click.

The last sidebar update is the most recent addition to it.  Since I started my 'Things I Like Series', I have been adding the things I like to a list on the side.  This isn't incredibly exciting, but I think it's kind of fun.

Now, on to views.  We're pushing the 600 mark right now (individual views separated by at least an hour), which is awesome.  Who'd have thought that one month's worth of my ramblings would be read 600 times?  My hope is that one month from now we will have more than 1200.  Ideally, we'll have 1200 views in this month alone, but that might be a little optimistic.  I know I've said this a lot, but if you enjoy reading, send the link.  Let's get this thing to really take off.

From views to comments.  I would like to see more of you commenting on posts.  I think the ideal situation would be that everyone who reads a post will comment on it in some form.  So if you read from an RSS feed, or Google Reader, please drop by and post; and if you read here - leave a comment every once in a while.  Let me know you're reading, and give me some feedback about what you think.

There is one more thing ...

Email!  Today I am launching a new feature for A Flemm Blog.  @aflemm.com email addresses.  To get one, all you need to do is email newuser@aflemm.com with your name, and your desired username (the part before the @).  The nice part about this is that at the moment there are no users, so you can have any username you'd like.  These email accounts are exactly the same as Gmail, because this is a Google-hosted service.

Transferring from one email account to another couldn't be easier.  All you need to do is set up a forward from the old one to your new @aflemm.com address.  All email services allow you to export your contact list as CSV (comma separated values), which can be imported directly into the A Flemm Blog Mail.  When people send mail to your old account (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! etc.), and you reply from your aflemm account they will eventually get the point and update their address book, without you having to go through the effort of notifying everyone you know.

So there's no reason not to switch, and the benefit is a very cool email address and the choice of any username you'd like.  DO IT!

And that's the state of the blog.  Thanks for reading, I hope you will continue to do so.