A cluttered mind is a sign of….. Well, I’m not sure what it is a sign of, but I have one today. Therefore, I’ve decided to use this space to attempt a bit of de-clutter and to fill you in on a few things that might be of interest to you, my readers.
Bandwidth Exceeded
The main reason I’m feeling a bit discombobulated is because of this error message that flashed on my computer screen when I tried to open my website on Friday morning. “Bandwidth exceeded”. Huh? What do I do with that?
Now, I ‘m a techno-idiot, so I had no idea what that meant. I immediately emailed my web guru-girl with an SOS for help. I suspected that I might have been hacked. In the meantime, I had a Facebook conversation with my friend AJ and told her what had happened. She said, “Oh dear, that stinks. The good news is, your traffic is soaring and causing that!”
Like Sarah in the Old Testament, I laughed to myself and thought, “Yea, right. I doubt that.” What AJ was saying was that my website was getting lots and lots of visitors..so many that it overloaded my capacity. “Yea, right!” I’ve never had a post go viral, so I was sure that my diagnosis of a hacking was correct.
In the meantime, I hopped over to my Google Analytics page, secretly hoping that AJ was right. Holy cow! This is what I saw:
AJ was right! My website usually gets around 90-120 page views per day (the flat part of the blue line). Beginning on October 20th and lasting through October 29th, one of my posts that I wrote and posted months ago went viral. At the peak of the time, my website got 948 page views (Mount Kilimanjaro there in the picture) . Because of all the traffic, my capacity on my website was exceeded and I was shut down by my hosting service. The post that went viral was this one:
The good news is that my web guru added bandwidth to my site on Saturday morning and I was back up and running.
I have no idea who picked up on my post on hell and promoted it so much that it went viral. Wish I did. I would love to thank them! I do know that the majority of the traffic came from Pinterest. Creating amazing Pins for each of my posts has really increased my overall blog traffic. My friend AJ offers a blogging course (Christian Bloggers Bootcamp) a few times a year that teaches you all about how to blog more effectively. The information I learned in her course enabled me to create the Pin that I used on the hell post, and that pin caused my post to go viral!! I’ll be sharing information very soon on when AJ will be running another Christian Bloggers Bootcamp. I highly recommend that you sign up for it. Stay tuned.
A New Teaching Series – The Revelation
I have shared here in the past that my Tuesday morning small group spent almost two years studying through the book of The Revelation with Precept Ministries material. In addition, a few years ago I wrote a series here on the blog looking at the seven churches of The Revelation.
Over the past few months I have felt the Holy Spirit leading me toward another series examining the entire book of The Revelation. I’ll be very transparent with you….a series from Revelation scares the bejeebers out of me, for a whole host of reasons. The two primary ones are:
- I’m not an authority on Revelation.
- I still have many questions about the events of The Revelation.
Yet, the Spirit seems to be saying, “Write”. So, I’m praying about it. I’m asking the Lord for a cool, catchy title for the series. I’m asking Him for an outline. In short, I’m asking Him for everything….words, pictures, timelines……everything I need to write the series.
This is where YOU, my readers, come in. I would love to hear your thoughts on a couple of things:
- What kind of series from The Revelation would capture your attention? A chapter by chapter look? A topical look at major themes? A topical look at major players? Word studies from The Revelation? A Q&A? Something else?
- For those of you who are uber-creative…help me come up with a cool, catchy title for the series.
Again, stay tuned. I will let you know more as the Lord reveals it to me.
Blog Post Images
This part of the post is for bloggers only, and is a major Public Service Announcement. Blogging friends, I have had two friends get slammed with fines and/or lawsuits because they used images on their blog that either they did not acquire correctly, or did not give proper attribution to the creator. This is getting to be a very big deal in the world of blogging. There are folks out there who are paid to surf blogs and look for posts that use images without proper attribution. The fines for doing this can amount to the thousands of dollars.
So, a word to the wise. If you are going to use stock images, please, please pay the fees to acquire them and give proper attribution to the creator. I am in the process of going through every image on my blog to make sure I have done this. If you have images that you think are not acquired or attributed properly, either fix them or DELETE THEM RIGHT NOW!!!
The best practice for blog post images is to use your own photos. That is what I am doing for the most part now. Occasionally I will purchase one from a stock image site like Fotolia. I also use awesome images from Death to the Stock Photos, which are completely free. Join Death to the Stock now! You will be so glad you did!!
I think I have de-cluttered a bit. I will be eager to get your input about today’s post. Any of the topics on today’s post is fair game for comment. So, comment away, friends! You are a blessing to me! Thanks for reading.
