Now I’m just creeping into year two with my blog, thought a little update and reflection would be about right. It has been a personal blog through an incredibly happy time, including my journey to early retirement and trying to stay on top of some health issues.
Interactions
I love it when readers get in touch with me, asking questions etc. You can make comments on each post or use the contact screen to get in touch. I mention below people getting in touch to ask my advice about having a catheter and trying to be active (happily I’m not plumbed that way anymore!).
As an example of people getting in touch, a representative from Cosyfeet has been in contact to tell me about their community grant scheme. Apparently most of their customers are retired and some might be isolated or lonely. To address this, Cosyfeet make an annual award to a community group to help their projects. Last year they funded the purchase of some Samsung tablets and where local teenagers showed the older folk how to use them – brilliant! It is impressive when a relatively small amount of money can have a huge impact and bring so much social benefit and capital.
To enter for the Cosyfeet Community Project Award 2019 apply online at: www.cosyfeet.com/communityprojectaward or call for an application form on 01458 447275. Entries should be received by 31st July 2019. The winning organisation will be announced in September.
Technical stuff
I have said before, I feel like a reluctant mechanic with my blog. I like to simply use it, not get too involved in the mechanics and technical stuff as it’s not my thing.
However, I like using WordPress as the database for my blog and I’ve become reasonably capable with it. Having said that, I often feel a bit nervous about updating plug-ins and even WordPress itself as you never know for sure if everything will work out.
Installing a plug-in to achieve site security favoured by Google and other search engines was a good milestone. That’s why I have an https address and you’ll probably see a padlock in your address bar.
Recently I clocked the PHP coding needed updating and at first I didn’t have a clue what this was. It had me delving into the Control Panel to find it and then use a more recent version. This in turn meant that I could update to the latest WordPress 5.2 which will hopefully keep things running sweetly.
Having been to the Digital St Albans MeetUp a few times, that has proved an invaluable source of the latest news. So much so, I am thinking of starting something like this in Dunstable.
I use Hostgator as my hosting provider and they are great. Even when I was getting ready to update the site, I asked Hostgator to confirm my backups were running alright. They have proved themselves to be very helpful and responsive many times!
Most popular posts
This is quite funny. My most popular post is https://maturingwell.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/01/exercising-with-a-catheter/. I had an indwelling catheter for most of last year and I can tell you it made running awkward and cycling impossible, so I blogged about it.
Everyday people find the post through Google and while there have been a few comments, people have been in touch about this via the contact page. So it seems I have a certain niche blog post there, as there’s almost nothing on the web about this and yet it does affect a significant number of people.
Otherwise I find Twitter is useful in driving traffic my way. If I tweet about a post, I often get a spike in people visiting my blog.
Feedback from readers
Some of my friends can be a bit blunt with feedback, so at least I know where I stand. I love them so much! This is a summary of what they’re telling me…..
- more posts about personal finance and frugal living
- shorter articles are probably better
- sometimes friends or former colleagues find my cycling blog and don’t realise it is mine!
- amusing tales of church life seem to go down alright, although I like to ask Rachel to review a post before I publish it (don’t want to be upsetting folk!)
- some guest posts will be welcome