Good question. And one of the nice things we have gained by moving to our new WordPress platform last September was access to some pretty detailed statistics. What they tell us is that, by and large, our numbers are going up.

Views and Visitors

Let’s start by defining views vs visitors. You’ll notice that the graph above lists 194 views and 40 visitors on the highlighted day of January 25th.

• A view is counted when a visitor loads a page.
• A visitor is counted when we see a user for the first time in a given period (in the above case, one day).

Since launching our new site last September, we totaled a stunning 488 visitors who viewed 2,676 pages in 2020 (2,438 from within Canada and the rest from 8 other countries). In 2021, 119 visitors have viewed 761—and this is only January!

Our best single day was September 23, 2020, the week following our move to WordPress. That day saw 43 visitors load 499 page views. Our second busiest day was just this week. January 25, 2021, was visited by 40 people who loaded a total of 194 pages. Mondays, as it turns out, consistently see the most traffic.

What’s popular?

Well, that was a surprise for your editor. The single most viewed page (by a margin of 2 to 1 over the next most popular) is RRC’s Staff News, loaded multiple times each day! Clearly our members are keen to keep in touch with what’s happening on the old stomping grounds.

Next come contributions from our members. The most popular by far in 2020 was Leslie‘s The torch; be yours to hold it high. So far in 2021, Howard Engel’s A Perfect Post-RRC Career for a Chronic Numismatist & Unrepentant Bibliophile is just a nose ahead of Will Miller’s Travel to Mexico for top spot.

Finally our Newsletters and Passages pages round out the most viewed items on the site.

What’s coming?

2021 promises to be a banner year for our blog. We have received more submissions in the last couple of months than we have in the previous year. Authors Will Miller, Howard R. Engel, and Lina Garcia have joined our regulars Leslie Walsh, Dale Watts, Karen Wall, and our prolific resident short-story author, Ron Blicq, to breathe new life into the site.

These new scribblers heeded the call for submissions to our Celebration of (Retired) Life series, as I hope many of you will. We welcome any uplifting, funny, inspiring, or otherwise simply interesting story, profile, or bit of whimsy. Simply email your 500- to 1,000-word piece to HG-Editor@RRC.CA.

So please join some of our past occasional contributors such as Gail Shimonek, Bob Barr, and Wayne Ferguson to send a few more pieces our way. The more articles your editor receives, the fewer he will be forced to post signed Editor, Guy Dugas, or Buster Laroux.

Oh yeah, SUBSCRIBE!

It’s really easy.

If you haven’t already done so, go to our blog at RRC-HG.CA, type in your email address in the box provided on the homepage, and click on the SUBSCRIBE button.

That’s it! That will allow you to receive email notifications every time there is a new post on the site (make sure you check your junk/spam folder if you don’t).

Happy 2021, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Your editor, Guy Dugas