Friday, September 26, 2008

I'm somewhat stunned. 100,000 people have checked in with Stella Borealis

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I started this blog in February of 2006 (I think). It's slightly different that it was originally intended to be; I hope it is better than it first was. Some ideas were too ambitious; some were just too much work. But it seems to be filling a need for Catholics in our region.

As of sometime yesterday, September 25, the 100,000th visitor (SiteMeter count, which is a tiny bit low, one guesses) arrived at Stella Borealis. I hope there were interesting things for them to digest and take action on.

Of course, many of these visitors were repeats, and I especially thank them. But if Rush Limbaugh and Google get to count repeats, who am I to go against the system?

Thank you all!

Ray Marshall
Stella Borealis
Minneapolis

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ray,

I very much enjoy your site and visit it with some regularity as it help me keep up with what is going on around the area. And on top of that you include other great articles from outside the region, like the Bishop Soto's address.

I like your focus.

- Sam

Unknown said...

Thank you, Sam. I appreciate hearing that.

The local Catholic news is the highest priority for me, but frankly there isn't much of it that can be easily found. Thank heaven for "Google Alert" (my secret detective).

And just in case people have wondered, I'm not particularly interested in washing dirty Church laundry in public unless something positive can be seen in the story.

But I know that to make a blog work, you have to be posting almost every day. Otherwise people stop coming back.

So other things appear here being that I'm a news junkie and have a bunch of issues about which I'm very interested (the "Life" issues, the "Brave New World" genetics issues such as embryonic stem cell research, reverent liturgies, and some secular issues. Few of the latter issues appear here very frequently.

Terry Nelson said...

I hav a feeling those stats are wrong - you surely have more hits and readers than that... You are THE news blog around here.

Unknown said...

Terry

If I divide 100,000 by the number of days I have been active, considering the first six months people didn't know I was here, the numbers probably aren't that far off. And since everybody (mostly)(except you) uses the free sitemeter stats, I'm content.

I knew I'd never get to the stratosphere of St. Blogs heights like Father Zuhlsdorf or Jimmy Akin because I limit my topics generally to the region.

And every now and then I meet someone on the street who gets excited when they find out who I am ("You're Ray Marshall from Stella Borealis???"

But most people who hear that I am a blogger don't even ask the name of the blog. Blogging is still a closet game for most.

Anonymous said...

Always happy to visit and find something under the current date. Not always possile, but I keep checking in all the same. Thanks, William

P.S. Check out "Moral Force, Scranton" over at NewAdvent. This, rather than the USCCB double talk, should be our bishops' voting guidelines. Clear, to the point, and easy to understand!

--William

Unknown said...

Thanks, William.

I've looked at the Scranton story a couple of times. I don't feel like transcribing the parish message. I'll have to see if I can copy that thumbnail and the full size version of the message.

It's taken me over three hours just to read Thursday and Friday email and I'm now getting to the end of Saturday's at 6:00 p.m. And I haven't looked at one blog yet today except those that were linked by an email.

News blogging takes a very long time some days. But there was some good stuff today.

The Ironic Catholic said...

Woo hoo! Congrats!