Last Tuesday marked 6 months of blogging at Visual Swirl. While it’s been a little slow on the posts the last few weeks, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first half year of blogging on design. What follows is a quick summary of those months with some thank yous and a preview of what’s on the horizon.

First Things First

A quick list of the firsts around the Swirl:

  • My first post was a quick recommendation for a free font named Chunk Five.
  • My first comment was from Matt Ward on a post about Animal Logos.
  • My first guest post was from Li Ainley-Walker. She wrote a great piece about Typography in Art.
  • My first day with over 1,000 visitors was January 26, 2010. That day 1,244 visitors checked out the Swirl.
  • My first custom theme was released on February 1st and is what you see today.
  • My first advertisement was sold on February 3rd to Pixmac stock photography site.

Numbers and Such

Sometimes we let statistics go to our head but here’s a few to measure the journey:

Since December 1st, 2009, Visual Swirl has seen

  • 164,782 Visits
  • 304,591 Page Views
  • 81 Posts (including this one)
  • 1,310 Comments

My top traffic sources were (according to Google Analytics):

  • Google: 19,583 visits
  • Twitter: 9,208 visits
  • dzone: 7,957 visits
  • Design Float: 7,086 visits

My top 5 posts (in total pageviews):

Special Thanks

There are a few people I would like to thank who helped make this first 6 months great. First, Matt Ward from Echo Enduring Blog. A post he wrote on why you shouldn’t start a design blog helped push me to make sure I didn’t fade away like so many other design blogs have. Thanks for the encouragement and support Matt!

I’d also like to give a quick shout out to all of my wonderful guest posters. From my first guest poster, Li to the monthly contribution of Emma Looney and her wonderful Desktop Calendars and all my other guest posters.¬† I couldn’t have done this without you all.

Also, thanks to Jacob Gube at Six Revisions, Catalin Zorzini from Inspired Magazine, and Andrew Houle from My Ink Blog for allowing me the opportunity to write guest posts for their blogs. You can check out these posts:

Finally, a big shout out to all my loyal readers. Thanks to the those who’ve been with me since December and those who’ve joined me along the way. I hope that this blog has inspired you and maybe taught you something or provided you with resources you didn’t know about before. Please continue to let me know what you want and I’ll try to oblige.

A Little About The Future

Speaking of the future of the blog there are a few things to look forward to over the coming months. In an effort to increase the number of posts being released, I hope to feature more guest posts in the next few months. If you’d be interested in writing a post or tutorial, please drop me a line. I also hope to release more tutorials and in depth articles. If there’s anything specific you would like to see, my ears are always open to suggestions. Finally, I have a few new features and announcements up my sleeves. I’ll be posting more on these over the coming months.

Thanks for making the first 180 days great! Here’s to the next 180 and beyond.

Share it With Your Friends:
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Design Float
  • DZone
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
  • Digg
  • LinkedIn
  • Mixx
  • Tumblr

Want More? Subscribe and We'll Deliver it to You.