At last, a 671st Post!

Today Panorama of the Mountains celebrates its second birthday.  Hurrah for me!  Now I’m the parent of a blog in it’s terrible twos.

A lot’s changed over two years, but much has remained the same.  Here’s what Panorama of the Mountains looked like on January 11th, 2007, the oldest page saved at the Internet archive.   Wow, there’s a lot of links in the blogroll I don’t read anymore.  In fact I don’t even blogroll anymore because it was getting cluttered (I do have plans to restore a more select blogroll, but you can always keep up with what I’m reading at Bloglines).

BLOG STATS

Total views: 56,372

Busiest day: 428 — Monday, September 29, 2008

Posts: 670

Comments: 701

Categories: 159

Tags: 342

6,531 spam comments (denied)

TEN MOST POPULAR POSTS OF ALL TIME

Title                                                              Views

Book Review: The Painted Veil by W. Some	2,530
Beer Review: Negro Modelo	2,282
Boston Walking Tours	925
Boston By Foot Tour of the Month: Art De	850
Book Review: The Great Divorce by C.S. L	809
Book Review: Mayflower by Nathaniel Phil	755
Books to Read in 2008	695
Mis pantalones son café: Mets Player	663
Weekend in New York	640
Book Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane	614

Frankly, I’m mystified by the appeal of some of these posts.  So here’s a list of my ten favorite posts of the past year, or at least the ones that deserved more attention for all the work and craft I put into them:

• Extreme Napping
• No Kicks on Route 66 (ok, this one got a lot of attention, some of it unpleasant)
• Panorama of the Mountains Fashion Report
• Let It Snow x 3
• Greeting Cards for Sisters
• Idea: The Librewery
• Obama’s VP: The Perfect Choice (Joe Biden? Feh!)
• 1908 Night
• If the Mets Were the Yankees
• Shea Stadium: A Personal History

My hope for the next year is to have every post be as clever, witty and well-written as these ten.  Failing that, I need to find some way to better promote my best posts so this won’t become the blog known for Negro Modelo reviews.

WHAT’S NEXT

When I started this blog I intended it to be the liberal blog that would oppose all those conservative blogs (yet somehow I rarely write about politics), a progressive Catholic blog (I found other people who write about faith better than I can), the best Mets blog in New England (which bored me to tears), a library blog from a public services perspective (I ran out of steam on that too) and a source of commentary on all sorts of things like books, movies, beer, concerts, and special events (that I’ve done very well).  Unable to settle on one theme, I decided it would be a panorama of ideas until one central theme emerged.  Two years later its still a panorama.  I have some ideas to make it better that I’ll be working on over the next several weeks, but overall I have to say I’m pretty pleased I’ve kept this up so long.

Previously:

• Dec. 4, 2006: At last, a first post!
• Dec. 4, 2007: At last, a 393rd post!