Byte-counting

April was big, but slightly less big than the heights of March for most measures. I think we have reached a new plateau basically. We wrote less posts (mainly my fault) so we got less hits, basically. However we now have a fab new blogger, katy, which is very exciting.

April 2009:
Posts: 114 (average of 27 per week)

Comments: Again I haven't had time to count these up, and it's pretty difficult. If anyone has a quick way to do it in Blogger then do let me know. (Average of four most commented posts: [41+32+26+26]/4 = 31)

Most commented on post: The ex-expat's Veitch pleads guilty (41 comments)

Also popular in the comment department: Three posts by Anna: The Eskimo Debate (32 comments), Did I cheat? I feel a bit cheated (26 comments), and Hi-5 goes low-brow (26 comments). And zero for coke from Anjum (26 comments). Much lighter in the bulk comment department this month than last. This may partly be because we have reasserted our approach to the kind of community we want The Hand Mirror to be.

Guest posts: April featured guest posts from Rebecca (a review of the Topp Twins doco, Untouchable Girls), Stephanie Mills (nuclear testing compensation), and Ms Giraffe (who shared her complaint to TVNZ on the odious behaviour of Mr Paul Henry). These have been three very popular posts, so thanks again to our guest bloggers for writing them, and to our readers for suppoting them with the clicky.

Page loads: 25,429 (848 a day)

Biggest day: 17th April (1293 hits) and I have no idea why. We also had seven other days where hits cracked the 1000 mark.

Unique visitors: 16,689 (556 a day)

These last three sets of stats are all based on Statcounter, and have been for all the previous byte-counting posts. Extreme Tracking results were very similar, slightly lower in general, don't know why! I'll be continuing to report the Statcounter ones because they require less effort on my part. Our Tumeke ranking is based in part on the Extreme Tracking daily uniques figure, which was 510 for March (Statcounter showed 539).

Our Tumeke blog ranking for March: 11th (up one from February, I expect our ranking to drop for April)

I've also added Google Analytics this month, although I'll keep reporting Statcounter for consistency with previous months. This does allow me to now record the most popular posts since I installed it (19th April), clicky wise.

Top 5 most popular posts in April:

1. Tony Veitch - some must read posts by Julie
2. Because being abducted by pervert is every woman's dream by Anna
   
3. Introducing The Hand Mirror by Julie
4. The Eskimo Debate by Anna
5. Fat hatred by Deborah

Coming up in May:

* A Wellington Hand Mixer
* Some stuff around the child discipline referendum
* Work on some electoral activism that we have yet to finalise...

Past byte-counts:
March 2009 stats
February 2009 stats.
January 2009 stats.
December 2008 stats.
November 2008 stats.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who helps makes The Hand Mirror a joy to work on :-)