Happy Anniversary!  Blog for Iowa is One Month Old!

I know it's hard to believe Blog for Iowa has been up and running for a whole month now, but it's true.  The first post went up on April 1, 2004, at 7:27pm CST.

Some Potentially Interesting Statistics

Distinct Hosts Served:  This is a count of individual computers that accessed at least one page of Blog for Iowa during any one day or month.  By “distinct” they mean that if the same computer accesses Blog for Iowa more than once, it will still count as only one computer.  This figure can be used to estimate the number of readers, but it counts computers, not people.

Distinct Hosts Served in April, 2004:  2830

Number of Page Views in April, 2004:  7362

Biggest Day:  April 21, Hosts Served = 203, Page Views = 411

Number of Articles Posted:  97

Number of Comments Posted:  117

Most Viewed Topic:  Photos

 (This is almost like a sick practical joke.  The Photos topic is supposed to house the collection of every photo ever posted on Blog for Iowa.  Unfortunately, due to a software glitch, I still am unable to post photos.  I also am unable to remove the Photos topic from the Topics component, which is not a glitch.  So, there are all those people, clicking away on the Photos topic and getting nothing at all.  Sorry about that!)

Number of Posts Deleted From the Comments:  4

 (This was owing to some buggy software that caused these posts to be duplicated, not because of content.)

Number of Posts Deleted From the Main Blog Page:  I don't know, maybe 12 or 15

 (I'll tell you, some really weird buggy stuff happens where I'm just minding my own business and several hours later, a post will re-post itself and make me look like a fool.  You know, if I wanted to post the same post twice, I could not do it.  I can make changes and save it again, but that does not cause a double post.  One day, and this just about had Alta rolling on the floor, I got locked out of the control panel and every time I tried to get back in, I was told the system was down for maintenance.  Unbeknownst to me, every time I tried to get back in, the system re-posted the last post.  I did not know until Alta informed me that the system had posted that one post 7 times!  That would account for 6 of the deleted posts.  I don't know why things like that always crack me up.)

And, last but not least, our first official contact from Democracy for America regarding our Non-affiliate Non-chapter State Group-hood Status:  April 30.

Unfortunately, Alison called the wrong number so I didn't get the message until 12 hours later when she emailed me at the wrong email address.  Mm-hmm.  But, hey, the good news is they know we exist (it was probably those 16,000 emails we sent them) and they are finally taking on some extra staff to help Alison with her myriad duties.  I have complete confidence that we will connect when Alison gets back in to work on Monday.

All in all, it's been a hectic month for our members, what with trying to create a structure for a grassroots organization from scratch, feeding material into an always-hungry blog, locating County Coordinators, forming committees, attending conference calls, emailing, emailing, emailing – did I mention emailing? –  praying with our feet for Project Myth Breaker, and organizing the Dean delegates for the district conventions.

Oh, and as my anniversary gift to you, I just added the RSS feed from Blog for America to the left sidebar.  Scroll down to see the last 10 topics (with links) on Blog for America.  I thought that was a pretty nifty thing to do, especially since earlier in the day, I didn't know an RSS feed from Adam.

So, my hat's off to you.  You continue to inspire and amaze me.  Well done, Democracy for Iowa!  Fighting for Democracy is hard work, but we're doing it!