I started this blog on July 17, 2004 and for the first five weeks or so I didn't have a counter on it. In that time I took the bar, went on vacation and didn't do all that much with it. Then, on August 23, 2004, I put a counter on the site and started keeping track of how many people stop by. The last couple years on this date, I've mentioned what the site traffic has been. I'll do the same today. Let the navel gazing begin!
I don't have a lot of time to ramble on right now as we are closing on our house today and I've been busy getting ready for the move. But let me give you a little bit of information.
My stat counter program tracks page hits and unique visitors. It does a good job distinguishing between bots and real live visitors, so I'm pretty confident that the page hit totals are reasonably accurate. I'm not as confident about the unique visitor totals, but I have a reasonable confidence in them and they've been a reference for the last three years.
Between August 23, 2006 and the end August 22, 2007, there were 456,822 page hits at the WGOM and 154,359 unique visitors. That represents a pretty substantial increase over the year before (227,681 and 102,445). The largest month in terms of both page hits and unique visitors has been July 2007, with 58,629 page hits and 17,065 visitors. That record won't last long, as I expect August to be just shy of 70,000 page hits and over 20,000 visitors. With just a little ciphering you can figure out that we are averaging over 2200 page hits a day for the month (and 700 visitors).
Year to date, we've had 328,588 page views and 109,607 visitors. That's more page views than in all of 2006.
A little bit about content before I make a few closing remarks. There were 1,433 articles posted in the last 365 days. That's pretty freaking incredible. That's an average of 3.92 posts per day. Last year at this time, I wanted a post for people to have an open chat about whatever they wanted, and I came up with the Cup of Coffee idea. Then, I found the Berenguer Boogie video and decided to incorporate music videos on the site. YouTube has a wealth of great stuff and I really like that feature. Plus, finding a template that would accommodate the video like this one does was a big deal. In the off season, I'm going to do some tinkering with the site to fix some of the problems that came with this template.
One of the best decisions I made about this site was to invite others to post. The site would have died without all of you. Here's a little tally of number of posts in the last 365 days.
| Author | Number of Posts |
|---|---|
| AMR | 33 |
| Andrew | 22 |
| BabySBG | 3 |
| Banjo | 10 |
| BigMak | 36 |
| brianS | 74 |
| CarterHayes | 3 |
| E-6 | 23 |
| frightwig | 61 |
| Geoff | 2 |
| Greek House | 4 |
| Lucy | 2 |
| Rhubard_Runner | 36 |
| SBG | 885 |
| ubelmann | 238 |
| Will Young | 1 |
Yeah, I posted over half of the entries (and a lot of those were Cups of Coffee), but think of it, this site had 548 "guest" postings over the last year. That is a tremendous number and to me it represents a real investment in this little site by a lot of people who enjoy coming here. I changed the site name to SBG Nation for a reason -- because of all the hard work that a lot of people have put in to make this a fun place to hang out. Thanks to all of you, (especially BabySBG!).
There have been over 50,000 "Letters to the Editor" posted in the last 365 days. I find that to be a tremendous number, way more than I would have ever expected. Last year, I was excited about 13,000. The site does lose a little readership in the off-season, but there'll still be a Cup of Coffee ready every single day for some conversation. Jeff A, keep us up to date on former Twins! I have never, ever contemplated a policy for comments. I have the right to delete comments and I have deleted a ton of spam (that's not part of the 50,000). I also deleted two comments in the last year by a user that I know personally -- not because the comments were abusive, profane, argumentative or anything like that. He posted some information about himself that I thought best be kept private, so I removed them. It's possible that I'll delete comments in the future, I don't know. But, I'm not anticipating that.
Some sites enforce strict comment policies to keep comments on topic. You'll see that in larger trafficked sites. I suppose that things can get out of control and they want their sites, on which they work hard, not to be overrun by yahoos. I can understand that, but by that time, it's probably too late. For some reason, though, our little corner of the world hasn't had that problem. I think it's because a lot of people who stop by are visiting. Sometimes, a good visit veers off into different directions -- beer, food, the Bible, kids, college (whether you are in it now or twenty years ago), music. This site is about more than baseball, so feel free to talk about whatever.
I'd like to thank Aaron Gleeman and Seth Stohs, who are primarily responsible for a good portion of you finding this site. Those two guys have been very good to SBG Nation and link here frequently. I appreciate their continued support. There are other sites that link here and I don't mean to slight them, but those two people really put butts in the seats.
Finally, thanks to all of you for stopping by. It's been fun. I hope to see a bunch of you at the SBG Nation Convention (details coming soon).
Thank you, Stick, for having somewhere for us to stop. I've been coming here since '05 I think and the growth has really been something to see. I agree that the civility in the comment section is a wonderful thing... such a rarity.
Thanks for the
stupiditycourageforesight to open up the content to guest authors, SBG. The volume and direction that fellow Citizens have taken WGOM content has been great, and I can't wait to see what other fascinating categories pop up in the future. Keep up the tremendous work, Citizens!I'm a little nervous about high traffic; I've seen too many great sites become hangouts for abusive and immature commentors. So far (with the exception of New Guy -- I kid!!) SBG Nation seems to have avoided that, for which I'm sure we're all grateful.
btw, sometime I'm going to get some cheap shelving units and see if I can't organize The Vault so it's less like this.
Thanks SBG (and nation) for keeping this site going. It is definitely one of my must reads for a multi-daily dose of half baked crap. I also agree with RR above how refreshing it is to have commentors who haven't overrun the site with troll-like views.
I don't know what I'd do without the game logs. There have been numerous occasions where I've seen a game but didn't have access to a computer and I would go back to read the game log. A very fun way to augment the game experience.
The game logs have been a great way to chat about the game with like-minded fans, and reading analysis here (along with AG's great stuff) has taught me a lot about baseball.
It is pleasantly surprising how few "yahoos" we do get, especially compared to the Strib's blogs or, sadly, AG.com, which used to be so much less... flamey.
My thanks to SBG and everyone else who contributes!
Keep up the good work SBG and all other contributors. Its a fun site to read. Once you're done with the top40 VORP for Twins can we do a bottom 10?
Punto
Bruckbauer
Mccarty
Walbeck
Hocking
Felton
Jimenez
RonDL
Klingenbeck
Bergman
Herr
Rondelle?
Oops, you already had that. Sorry...
Stahoviak.
Borgmann.
Herr put up better offensive numbers in his one year than loads of other 2nd baseman have in a twins uni (Lombo, Newman, Backman, Wilfong, Rivas, Randall, Canizaro, Martin, Kindall, etc. His problem was he was a jerk and nowhere near as good as the guy we traded for him. Looking back, you really have to question that move by Mcphail even more in that we got exactly what we should have expected. Besides his fluky 1985 year, Herr was a mediocre offensive 2nd baseman
OPS+ Herr
1984 95
1985 124
1986 88
1987 80
1988 91 (89 as a twin)
Stahoviak was pretty bad in 1997, but his decent 1996 probably helps cover that up and he didn't get too many at bats besides that. OPS+ of 91 as a Twin which isn't good (especially for a 1st basman, but not Punto or RonDL like)
Borgman was fairly mediocre, but Walbeck and Zimmerman were much worse.
Latham? He may not have played enough, though.
Becker?
Second base has been a black-hole for most of the Twin's history. After Carew, Knobby, and Slappy, the bottom pretty much falls out.
Latham was -10.4 in 1998, but I don't think that's enough to make the bottom 10. Becker had good years in 96 and 97. Being that he was a Centerfielder, I would guess he almost cracked the top100 as opposed to the bottom 10.
I'll stick with my orginal guess except SBG's right, Newman has to be involved. Bruckbauer obviously isn't there (just read that article) and probably no Felton either. I'll throw in Jackie Hernandez instead.
I deny that Rich Becker ever had a good year, and don't go trying to confuse me with your "facts" or "statistics"!
Rick Sofield? Willie Norwood?
Second base has been a black-hole for most of the Twin’s history. After Carew, Knobby, and Slappy, the bottom pretty much falls out.
Tim Teufel actually had a very nice career (11 seasons, 3562 PA, 254/336/404, 104 OPS+; his best year was 1984, when he accumulated 8.1 WARP3 for the Twins and finished 4th in voting for AL ROY).
Considering that two of the top 10 VORPers came from this position with a bunch of pitchers in the top ten too, it's arguable that the Twins have had better luck at 2B than most other positions.
Plus we had Todd Walker.
This sounds like a single post, but a good idea. McCarty is definitely on the list. I would imagine that Al Newman might make an appearance, too. Depending on the characters that show up I could expand it to multiple posts.
Nice blog.
(Moss never gets tired of that one.)
It is destined to become a classic. Indeed, it already has.
There are some awfully interesting folks that make up The Nation. Smart, funny, insightful, and quite often silly. It speaks highly of you, Stick. Glad I got my green card.
Thanks to SBG and everyone for making this place so much fun.
Ditto. Thanks for putting up with me. The Nation is a virtual home-away-from-home.
Thanks SBG,
I've really been glad for the opportunity to write here. A big problem for me when I had my own blog was that every once in a while I'd come up with a good idea for something to write about and would write about 10 pages on it. Then, I would not have any good ideas for a month but would feel forced to write to keep my handful of loyal readers (SBG being one of them) insterested. Most of the time this writing was total crap.
The format here is perfect for me because I don't feel limited in any way and I don't feel compelled to post when I don't have anything intersting to say. It's been a pleasure to write for a much larger audience and to have great discussions about the stuff I write (as well as the stuff other write or about nothing in particular).
I agree with Doctor "KG" Zoidberg!
How are you gonna top the MP? That was a brilliant idea.
Thanks for the WGOM SBG. I've been coming here for a long time (Check this out. October 21, 2004) I really appreciate the opportunity to be part of the Nation.
That's right, you've been around here longer than just about everybody else.
If you put out a good product, you get repeat customers.
But what if it's all half-baked crap? This is the relevant question!
You obviously know how to cater to the half-baked crowd.
Well, that came out wrong. I didn't mean to imply the Nation is a bunch of potheads.
stop bogartin' the roach, maaaaaaaaan.
You know, the government has this car that runs on water.
That's nothin' I heard of this guy over in the other county, well his brother in SoDak invented a car engine that could drive like 500 miles on a gallon of gas, but some gas company came and bought the prototype and all the blueprints, and now he's like set for life, but he can't tell no one about it.
More Skynard, man!
What song is it you want to hear?
I'm partial to "Simple Man" myself.
Oh, right.
FREEEEEBIIIRRRDDDD!
I was just playin' along with the conversation.
did you spend the 1970s in a cave, SBG? Or didn't they have FM radio in SoDak?
Can you read a freaking map?
North is up! I lived in North Dakota!!!! And no, there was no FM radio back then.
But, I know what Freebird is and I wasn't actually requesting any Skynard -- was just playing along with the stoner rambling.
He paid you a compliment, SBG. You should be grateful.
We are this close to a Dakota flame war.... teetering.... hold on.... balance....
Oof. Crisis averted.
right. SoDak. "51st in everything". Compliment.
Look, if you are paying cash for houses with the loose change you keep in your cupholders for toll fare, I'm thinking you're not on the cutting edge
Keep telling people that. We like being a well-kept secret.
Wait, those rectangles west of Minnesota have names? I always assumed those were just placeholders for something that the mapmakers were gonna fill in later!
I lived in SoDAk for 3 years. Purgatory, pure and simple.
Actually, it was similar to Minnesota, except way more single moms, teenage pregnancy, teenage smoking, Governors running stop signs, and way less hills, trees, curves in the road and lakes. Other than that, very similar. He He!
You've got the idea, zooomx. That's what we want people to think. Like I said, we want to be a well-kept secret.
What's a toll fare?
You got the Corn Palace goin' for you, Jeff A. Which is nice.
Crystal Cave, Rushmore, ... there is a very nice brewpub in Hill City (Mount Rushmore Brewing).
the Crazy Horse monument, on the other hand, was very disappointing. I remember going there in the early 1970s when it was pretty primitive, thinking it was cool. Now it is a massive tourist-trap.
Exactly on the Crazy Horse thing. The old man had a vision -- the kids are milking it.
We went to Rushmore/Crazy Horse on a long weekend once with my grandma from PA. We got on 90 at Blue Earth and then all the way over to the Black Hills. I had a nice time, though Crazy Horse did seem like a gyp.
I am a newcomer here (a little over a month I think), but your slogan 'Worlds Greatest Online Magazine' does not lie and keeps me coming back
"The World's Greatest Online Magazine" slogan originated as an ironic inside joke, but I think it truly has become the most entertaining and engaging group sports blog that I've come across. Everybody brings something to the table, whether in the features or the comment threads, that you don't find elsewhere.
I just come here for the coffee. Just when the pain seeps in after reading Ubelmann's "over my head" stats, the caffeine from the Worlds Greatest Cup of Java kicks in and takes the pain away.