Probably the single biggest reason I moved my blog from the Borland blog server was the lack of site statistics. I had no idea who was reading my blog, what posts were popular or how many people had subscribed to my RSS feed among many others. Moving my blog gave me much greater control over my entire blogging experience which has been very satisfying. I use Google Analytics which provides a wide array of statistics on website usage. For example here is a screenshot of the "execute overview":
You can drill down into each of these areas as well as many others. For example, I know my top blog entries in terms of pageview are:
- IE7 reg file for BDS
- Video of code completion features
- DAL frameworks for .NET
- My Take On Borlands CodeGear Announcement
Then there are the stats from my RSS feed which I get from FeedBurner. You can follow the number of subscribers from the "chicklet" that appears in the top right hand corner of my blog. Here is a chart of the growth of my feed since I moved my blog:
It's really nice to be able to "see" what's going on with my blog and having good statistics is a really good motivator.
By the way, if you think you're having deja vue regarding this post you're not. I accidentally posted this entry on Saturday and tried to rectify the situation before my feed was cached but apparently, at least Bloglines, has held onto the original snapshot even though I've pinged them numerous times to correct the error. Oh well.