Introducing My Most Widely Read Blog Posts
Labels: Blogging
First up, let me wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR, and may 2008 bring rich blessings to you and your family!
Beginning tomorrow, and for the next month or so—during my extended blog leave—I have arranged to highlight the thirty most read posts of all time from this blog.
These posts were selected on the basis of the number of visits to the individual post pages during the second half of 2007. Much of this, of course, reflects the extent of traffic sent from Google on certain subjects, but that, in turn, has been influenced to some degree by the number of people linking to those posts. Thus, this is hopefully a good measure of popularity among regular readers who blog themselves, as well as first-time visitors from Google.
Where two or more posts from the same series, or very much the same subject, could both potentially have made the top 30, only the most popular one did so. Links to the other related posts will appear in that post on the day the post is highlighted. Each post will be lightly edited by my editor, Annette Harrison, and the first few paragraphs—including a new introduction—will be reposted here, with a “Read-more . . .” link taking you back to the original post. By the time we get to the end, we will have re-published all thirty of these most popular posts. A list will be generated at the end of this post as each one is announced.
I hope this exercise will alert you to the fact that on most of the blogs you visit there is a large catalog of archived posts which may still be of interest today. I have had feedback from some readers of this blog that when they are researching a certain subject they have found the “Search This Site” feature quite useful in locating some of the things their favorite bloggers have had to say in the past on that subject. I certainly find that feature quite useful myself when visiting other bloggers' sites.
I hope you enjoy this republishing of some of my best bits! Some of these posts were more widely read than I ever expected, and many of my own favorites will make a reappearance while I’m spending January reflecting, recharging, praying, enjoying my family, planning for the year, and reading, as well as continuing in my secular job.
I will be on a retreat with other core team leaders from Jubilee Church beginning on the 11th of January through the 14th, which will come at the end of our customary church-wide week of prayer and fasting. I will also be away on business for a few days in January, which should also give me some additional much-needed personal time.
From the 3rd through the 18th of February I will be traveling with my daughter, Tamasin, and my son, Henry, to Orlando, Florida. We have never been to Orlando, and are excited about spending time bonding together as a smaller unit of our family. We will enjoy some hospitality from a close online blogging friend, Jesse Phillips, for some of the time. I’m sure I’ll post some updates on our trip while we are in Florida, and thanks to the kindness of my editor, written transcripts of my previous audio interviews with John Lanferman (the leader of Newfrontiers in the USA) and Mark Dever will also appear during February.
Please pray for me during this time that I will come back refreshed and raring to go with all my responsibilities, and particularly for the next phase of blogging as I press towards reaching the goal of completing five years of writing a blog in April 2008!
In the meantime, keep coming back! In addition to the republished material, I may not be able to resist posting some new material during this time. In any case, there will always be interesting headlines appearing in my sidebar from the Warnie Winners, and Annette will be highlighting other interesting posts from around the blogosphere.
Everyone needs a break from time to time, but I hope that the things I have set in place over the next six weeks will mean that you feel it’s almost as though I haven’t gone away at all. Please bear with me as I may not answer my e-mail as frequently as usual during this time.
As of January 2008, these are the thirty most widely-read posts on my blog:
