Koko Analytics, the local page counting tool I use here and on The New Leaf Journal, shows referrers. The vast majority of my regular referrals are from Google, with the rest being split between DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave Search, Yandex, and miscellaneous search engines (usually in that order, although sometimes Brave and Yandex switch positions). Unusual referrers stand out. I just noticed one from potterfun.com. I had no idea what it was, but it turned out to be a Harry Potter fan site. This struck me as peculiar. Not only have I never written about Harry Potter, I also never read it. While I did not find the where my link was posted, I suspect it is my article on a 1920s book about reading tea leaves. Why? One of the most recent Potter Fun articles is titled Study Your Future With Tea-Leaf Reading Divination. But that article does not include a single link, internal or external, so I could be wrong.
Tag: nlj news
Wayback Machine and My New Article Draft
I just published a review of Living for the Day After Tomorrow (a 2006 TV anime also known as Asatte no Hokou) on The New Leaf Journal. I had planned to simultaneously publish an article about how I first watched the show in June 2010 on Time Warner Cable’s Anime Network on Demand. I was able to pin down the exact week I started watching a 2006 anime in 2010 thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive was targeted by hackers a few days ago with a pro-Hamas hacker group claiming responsibility (responsibility not confirmed, however). While I could have published my finished draft Anime Network on Demand article today (it is not as if I am expecting it to be a big visit-driver), I decided to hold off until the Internet Archive is fully back online.
New Guestbook System
I had been planning to use the Gwolle Guestbook plugin here (I cannot use it on The New Leaf Journal because it relies on JQuery, which I disable over there). However, I decided that it was too heavy for what will probably be a light use-case. Over on The New Leaf Journal, I had briefly tried a comments-based Guestbook with an open source spam blocklist. However, we did not get any legitimate entries in that Guestbook before I shuttered it on account of the fact that a small number of spam comments were somehow showing up as published despite my requiring moderation in the WordPress settings. Wanting a Guestbook, I decided to give it a try on both sides while adding Antispam Bee, an entirely local anti-spam plugin, to my set-up. I also added a Block List Updater from the same developer to keep the open source-sourced blocklist up to date without my manual intervention. Finally, I use a plugin called Plugin Load Filter with allows me to explicitly limit Antispam Bee to specific pages. For example, this means that Antispam Bee only functions on the Guestbook page of The New Leaf Journal at the moment. We will see how it goes. But the way, while this site’s Guestbook looks solid (if I do so humbly submit myself), take a look at what I did on The New Leaf Journal side of things.
My 1,000 Articles at The New Leaf Journal
I published The New Leaf Journal’s 999th and 1,000th articles back in May. However, not all of those articles were mine. I published a few articles under the New Leaf Journal Editors byline and my friend and colleague Victor V. Gurbo has a good selection of posts on a number of mostly (but not entirely) music subjects. Today, I finally hit publish on my own 1,000th article: A stream of consciousness from someone who played EA Sports games back in the 90s about EA pontificating about shoving ads into its upcoming AAA offerings. I take readers from my memories of NBA Live 98 for Sega Genesis to a story from visiting my high school classmate’s man cave (it was a legit man cave, big TV, leather sofa, sports memorabilia, et cetera) where I witnessed the birth of a new phrase inspired by a game of Madden.
Google vs HN at the NLJ (2)
Nicholas A. Ferrell (The Emu Café Social)As of the evening of January 18, 2024, we are on pace to have more Google referrals this month (according to Koko Analytics, which I also use here) than Hacker News referrals.
I have been busy with New Leaf Journal and law work as of late, but I return to The Emu Café Social with a fun New Leaf Journal update. As of the afternoon of January 29, 2023, we have more Google referrals at The New Leaf Journal than Hacker News referrals despite our fairly high Hacker News page 1 appearance earlier in the month. It took a record Google month to do it, but is another sign things are looking up in terms of New Leaf Journal notoriety after struggling for much of 2023 with our arbitrary Bing ban.
Google vs HN at the NLJ (1)
Over at The New Leaf Journal, my January 5, 2024 article, which was about drug-enhanced professional cycling results, became the sixth New Leaf Journal article (going back to February 2021) to appear on Hacker News page 1 (only after a stop in The Browser newsletter). It reached as high as 11th on HN and was our fourth-strongest Hacker News article of the six that made page one. The page 1 run dissipated, but it left behind one encouraging point about NLJ’s notoriety. As of the evening of January 18, 2024, we are on pace to have more Google referrals this month (according to Koko Analytics, which I also use here) than Hacker News referrals. It will take a record Google month for us to do it, but we should make it by the 29th or 30th. While I am not a Google fan and only use Google Search via Startpage, I am a proponent on making it possible for people to find writing of interest with whatever search engine or front-end they prefer.
Documenting NLJ Appearance in The Browser
I published an article on The New Leaf Journal about doping in cycling during (and before) the Armstrong era. I noted in my Saturday newsletter that it unexpectedly blew up (by our standards) within hours of its publication. I was not immediately able to identify the source, but I figured out from our referrals that it had been shared by The Browser, a paid newsletter which sends readers five links per day. At the time, I could not confirm this directly because I am not a paid subscriber, but I noticed that The Browser shares several free links from past newsletters each day. Today, it shared our link, and I saved proof in the form of a Wayback Machine screenshot. Very neat.