Today, Dec. 31, brings an end to 2017 and my blog has reached a few milestones that I would like to share as the new year arrives tomorrow – with the biggest being my hottest-ever movie review and that the blog has passed the mark of 36,000 page views since the first post went live on May 22, 2014.
(NOTE: All statistics were as of 2:49 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2017.)
I’m finding it difficult to understand the popularity of my extremely negative review of the disgustingly bad movie “CHIPS.” Just about every time I check the page views on the blog, I see that “CHIPS” continues to find an audience via search engines. In the past week, it has had 31 page views and nearly 100 for the past month – and that’s more in seven days than some of my movie reviews have each experienced in their individual lives of three-plus years.
As of the writing of this blog entry, “CHIPS” is the fifth most popular movie review on the blog with 190 views and it was originally posted on July 9, 2017. That’s a rocketing star in my review world! The only movie review that’s done better with 228 page views is the HBO film “Barbarians at the Gate” and it was originally posted on July 27, 2014. The most-read review is of a TV mini-series which I will describe in two paragraphs.
By the way, I’ve expanded dozens of my reviews over the years with additional trivia and the updating of links.
Overall, my blog has notched 36,062 page views since that first post (and that very first was my review of the 1979 gang film “The Warriors”). The single most popular day (Aug. 15, 2014) saw 498 page views – with its strength coming from 250 views on a University of Florida football game photo that online readers of GatorCountry.com check out … and they viewed a few other pages, too.
The blog has been viewed by folks from more than 100 countries. About the only places where no one has viewed from include Greenland (but I have from Iceland) and a few countries in Sahara-centric Africa including Libya (but a bunch from other northern and many southern African countries, yet none from Madagascar). While the large island of Madagascar hasn’t given me any from the Indian Ocean, I do have a single view from the island of Réunion. Three countries close together that haven’t given me any traffic are Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Finally, the only countries in South America where I don’t have views from are Suriname and Paraguay.
Search words used most frequently to drive traffic to the blog are “halloween horror nights orlando chainsaw ghoul images” (I have a gallery of photos from Halloween Horror Nights events that we’ve attended).
Of course, my blog’s home page has the most page views, but at 3,237 views, it’s less than 10-percent of the overall hits. The second most-popular page is my review of the 1988 TV mini-series “Noble House” at 672 and the third is a review on how TV’s “The Big Bang Theory” jumped the shark with 496 views.
I review both individual films as well as reviewing entertainment under such headings as “don’t watch these films” or my look back at an iconic TV show such as “The Love Boat.” The most-read review on my blog is “Noble House” one and the second-most as I just mentioned is from Nov. 8, 2015, on TV’s “The Big Bang Theory” jumping the shark in the 2015-2016 season. I haven’t watched many episodes of that great sitcom since because of how crappy and annoying the show has become.
In all, I did 15 reviews over the past year, including both “CHIPS” and the demise of “The Big Bang Theory” (that’s different from the “shark” one). Through the writing of this entry, I have reviewed 320 films – the most recent being “Kingsman: The Secret Service” – and I’ve done 28 other reviews such as “3 really bad films” or a look at conversions of my favorite books to film.
However, reviews do not comprise my most prolific postings. Each day since June 25, 2014, I’ve posted a photo I’ve taken (or our daughter has taken) at Walt Disney World and even a few she took at Disneyland Paris. The third posting on this blog on May 23, 2014, was taken at Disney World. My first of 13 galleries (well, 13 as of today) of Disney photos is the single most popular Disney page and it is the fifth most-popular page on my blog. In all, I’ve posted approximately 1,320 Disney photos, with my favorite being of a nine-pound lemon at EPCOT that was an early posting in June 2014. I say approximately, since my system shows an overall total of 1,336, but that’s by category and I’ve used that for some non-Disney postings, too (like for this update since it contains Disney data).
Otherwise, I post photos from everything from things I see in traffic (ever see piggies on a trailer on their way to market?) to contrails in the sky to clouds to sunsets and sunrises. I’ve even posted photos after my surgeries to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon and, from just this past fall, my two knee-replacements.
If you’ve managed to read this far, thank you. I appreciate your viewing of my blog. I hope it has entertained you in some way. I am a professional writer of three decades, but only an amateur reviewer and photographer (although I have had quite a number of photos published over the years) and would get some gratification from folks reading it.
So, now on to 2018 …
CLICK TO VIEW MY PHOTOS AND GALLERIES:
Disney1 | D2 | D3 | D4 | D5 | D6 | D7 | D8 | D9 | D10 | D11 | D12 | Disney13 | HHN
D.C. | UF | Drive | Naples1 | N2 | N3 | N4 | Etc. | China | Cruises | NYC | Europe
© Chuck Curry and A Gator in Naples, 2017.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without
express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner
is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that
full and clear credit is given to Chuck Curry and A Gator in Naples
with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
