Blog on Shared Bits

Shared Bits 7-Year Anniversary

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-14

Highlights of my life and seventh year of blogging; Oct 2024 - Sept 2025.

01 - Shared Bits

I published 10 posts this year, including this post, bringing total posts published to 82.

Shared Bits visitor count began to increase quite a bit beginning in October last year. Shared Bits reached another milestone this year by exceeding 5,000 visitors per month for four months of the year. For the year, the average visitor count for Shared Bits was 4,053.

Shared Bits 6-Year Anniversary

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 2026-09-14

01 - Overview

Shared Bits set another milestone this year. In November 2023, I surpassed the 2,000 visitor hurdle. Although visitor counts can be exciting, the counts are tempered by the fact that not many people spend much time on my site.

I published 6 posts this year and retired 2. Therefore, Shared Bits now has a total of 72 published posts, including this post.

I like to replace the main site header image and the site identity icon image every three years. Since this is the sixth year of my blog, I replaced both images on 09/11/2024.

My Failed Experience Monetizing My Blog Using Ads in 2023

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 2026-09-08

01 - Introduction

I finally made time early in 2023 to begin researching ad providers in an attempt to monetize my blog.

I knew I didn’t want to use Google Adsense or an alternative ad service provider that is associated with Google Ad Manager ( AdPushup , Ezoic ) because I knew my blog would not be approved. Therefore, I did quite a bit of research to find alternatives and I compiled seven different lists. After much review of all of the lists, I initially decided on a couple of candidates. However, my first two choices didn’t work out, so again I went through the information I obtained through research and I chose additional candidates.

Shared Bits 5-Year Anniversary

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-14

01 - Overview

Five years ago I began my blogging journey. The average life of a blog isn’t very long, so I’ve reached an admirable milestone. Blogging has kept me busy, given me something productive to do, and has been a very rewarding experience.

Unique visitor count was on a nice upward trajectory the first few months, but then fell over the summer. Hopefully the unique visitor count will pick back up again. Average unique visitor count for the year was 1,119.

How I Organize Blog Post Image Files

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-02

If you don’t organize your blog post image files correctly, managing them can become tedious and time consuming. When I began blogging, I had the foresight to name my image files in a manner that enables me to know to which post they belong. With a bit of fine tuning over time, following is the format I currently use to name my image files:

YYYY-###-##_post-title_image–title_###x###.ext

where:

YYYY-### is the calendar year and blog post number
-## is the post image number
###x### is the image resolution (e.g. 640x460)
ext is the image file format; jpg or png (usually jpg)

All of my post header image files (image at the top of a post) get a post image number of 00 and an image title of post-header:

Shared Bits 4-Year Anniversary

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-13

Wow, what a busy year it has been. I think the past year has been my busiest year blogging yet. I published 13 posts over the past year, including this post. My total post count since starting my blog now stands at 58. My most popular posts continue to be the two posts on a usable Debian Linux installation.

I received a Wordfence Security notice on 10/15/2021 that the Slimstat Analytics plugin I used for visitor analytics appeared to be abandoned since it hadn’t been updated since 10/15/2019. Comments on the plugin’s Wordpress.org page seemed to indicate that something had happened to the developer. I opted to begin using AWStats . Later this year, I found out that someone else began developing the Slimstat Analytics plugin again, but I’ve elected to stick with AWStats. I think AWStats provides better analytics since it operates on the server side and it is not as resource intensive as the Slimstat Analytics plugin.

Shared Bits 3-Year Anniversary

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-29

The past year was a productive and busy one for my blog. The good thing is I’ve been able to blog the whole year, unlike last year .

My visitor counts have not increased the way I had hoped they would. Last year, there were 4 months where I had 200 or more visitors and one month with over 300 visitors. I’ve only had one month this year so far where I’ve had over 200 visitors. My monthly visitor counts have been fairly consistent though, averaging over 170 visitors a month. Visitor counts are according to the Slimstat Analytics plugin. AWStats , provided by my hosting provider, reports much higher visitor counts. I’m not sure which one is correct.

Shared Bits 2-Year Anniversary

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-29

I can’t believe it has been two years already since starting this blog. Once again, I’ve made a number of changes to the blog. Including this post, I’ve published a total of 31 posts. I wasn’t able to maintain my goal of publishing at least one post a month over the past year, but more about that later.

Sometime during the last 3 or 4 months of 2019, I decided to change the layout of the site main page by removing the rotating sample of prior posts. The rotating sample feature took up too much screen real estate in my opinion. I opted to implement a theme feature that provides suggested posts near the bottom of each post.

Shared Bits 1-Year Anniversary

Fri, 13 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-29

Shared Bits went live in September 2018. What a first year it has been. To date, I have written 26 posts (including this post), 2 of which have been deleted. I have learned so much and I successfully cleared a number of hurdles over the year.

I spent quite a bit of time over the past year tinkering with the Ashe Blog Pro theme that I use for my blog. My blog landing page has seen a number of changes and I’m quite happy with the current settings.

Starting a Blog: My First Experience

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-16

01 - Introduction

Running a blog is a lot of work in itself; e.g. planning, writing, administration, comment moderation, etc. However, the considerations and research required before even starting a blog can take quite a bit of time as well. I spent a number of days researching and planning all of the details that should be considered prior to starting a blog.

02 - Subject Matter, Blog Name, Domain Name

The very first thing you should think about when considering starting a blog is what you are going to write about; i.e. the blog subject matter. In conjunction with considering what you will write about, you need to come up with a name for your blog and if possible, a domain name that is similar to the name of your blog. I briefly tried blogging in 2016 on the Ghost publishing platform, so I already knew what I wanted to write about, what the name of my blog would be, and I hoped I would be able to use a domain name that was similar to my blog name.

My Recent Experience With Switching WordPress Host Providers

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Updated on 2026-09-09

01 - Introduction

Earlier this month, I began thinking about the need to renew my WordPress hosting plan with SiteGround . I first renewed my domain name registration for another year with Namecheap . I then logged into my SiteGround account and went to a page to renew my hosting plan. I received sticker shock when I saw the renewal rate. I had forgotten how much the renewal rate would increase since my initial year of hosting was at an introductory rate. There was no way I could afford to renew my hosting plan with SiteGround at the renewal rate, so I began looking into alternatives.