525,600 Minutes: ConBlog at One Year…

My, my, my…how time flies. It was one year ago today that I decided to enter the blogosphere and begin commenting on news and current events from my own perspective.
At the time, I’d seen the cable news outlets go on with wall-to-wall coverage of the developments in the Rush Limbaugh case. At that time, they were in a near orgasmic state from the reports that Rush Limbaugh had checked himself into a rehab facility to deal with his prescription pain killer problem. They almost seemed to be celebrating his misfortune and only because he’d been such a vocal critic of bias in the news media.
It was then I decided to exercise my First Amendment rights and publish my own commentary on the world.
Now, I didn’t expect to have a really high base of readers from day one–I knew that this was a long-term proposition. In fact, on ConBlog’s first day there were absolutely no readers–other than me, of course. In fact, I just threw some quick pages together in FrontPage and put them out on the server. My first blog, “In Defense of Rush Limbaugh…” went online late in the evening of October 11 and Conservative Blogger was born.
Over the past year, the site’s design has been evolving into the version you see now. I wish I’d kept a screenshot of the original site. The design was absolutely dreadful. The 2.0 version of ConBlog was done gratis by a friend of mine and was light years ahead of my very unskilled design. While it still wasn’t what I originally envisioned, I was happy to have something that didn’t look like an eight year old came up with it.
2.0 still wasn’t doing it for me, though. One weekend, I started looking at FrontPage templates I could purchase and customize with minimal effort. That’s how ConBlog 3.0 was born. While I liked the layout, the color scheme was still not what I wanted. I spent the entire weekend converting the archived pages and rolled out the latest redesign before I went to bed that Sunday night.
While feedback on the 3.0 design was overwhelmingly positive, I still thought it looked…well…like the old Microsoft Knowledge Base site. As far as the web was concerned, I thought it was somewhat “institutional.” I wanted to keep the feel of that site as much as I could, but not the look. I’d been surfing some blog sites and came across a design I liked, so I emailed the group that did it–Moxie Design Studios–and ConBlog 4.0 was born. That’s the version you see now, and I couldn’t be happier with it. (Many thanks to Mel at Moxie Design for her work on this site.)
As far as the blogosphere is concerned, ConBlog is still a small fish in an enormous pond. In one year’s time, I’ve gone from one dedicated reader (me) to now having several thousand readers monthly. Logging for ConBlog was not active before May 2004, but since then the number of visitors is up 800%.
I’ve also learned that most of you read ConBlog on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and there’s an even higher number of you who read it between 6:00pm and midnight (eastern time).
ConBlog has also been read in fifty-seven countries as of this writing. That’s not an exaggeration. There’s actually been people in fifty-seven different nations who have pulled up this site. The United States makes up 94% of the traffic, but hits have also been registered from:

The one that was the most surprising to me? That was Iran, with Pakistan being a close second. I honestly didn’t think that (a) people in those countries would be online or (b) care what I have to say. I was wrong…and I have to say that Iran being on the list gave me concern.
The number fifty-seven is also the number of blogs that have been written since this site started a year ago. Of that total, I have written fifty-six of them and Mike Pinciaro has written one. Others have been invited to guest blog, and there is also a guest blog form on this site for interested parties. (All blogs are subject to my approval and whim, by the way.) It occurs to me that Pinciaro might be slacking, but it’s just so hard to find good help these days.
This past year, the growth of ConBlog has met my expectations and I am right about where I hoped to be at the end of year one. In addition to a core group of dedicated readers, ConBlog has also benefited from having links at TownHall.com’s Right Pages, Yahoo, eTalkinghead, La Shawn Barber’s Corner and Blogs for Bush. Google has also been integral in the growth of this site. More searches of this site have occurred via Google than any other search engine on the web.
The goals for year two are to increase ConBlog’s exposure and number of readers, as well as update content more frequently. Believe it or not, having a full-time career and trying to have a social life isn’t always conducive to having a blog site. Although I try to update content several times weekly, it doesn’t always happen and it’s a constant source of irritation to me. People ask me often why I don’t update more frequently, and it’s because I just haven’t found the right balance in my schedule.
Of course, I must thank you all for helping ConBlog get to where it is today. The growth and success of this site in its first year is directly tied to all of you and the fact that you keep coming back. Please accept my sincere thanks–I literally could not have done it without you. (Yes, this includes you Liberals. I couldn’t have done it without you either—you just provide so much material.)
So…year two. It starts with the election in three weeks and, from there….who knows? There’s going to be plenty to comment on no matter who wins, that’s for sure.
Let’s tee this sucker up and kick it off, shall we?
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com