According to SEO experts, updating blog content regularly will effect the web traffic positively. So for a “rare” poster like me, seeing “Views per day: 10” in the WordPress analytics everyday is not new, and I am not serious about web traffic volume as I am (still) only a hobbyist blogger.

The small “Spike”

But what I saw yesterday in the “Wordpress stats” plugin’s chart, caught my attention. And you will know why if you take a look at the following image:

As you can see, the “Spike” on the 11th of August 2011 is really unusual.

So I clicked on the date to see more detailed information about it. The post that has attracted most of the 146 views on that day was → Tree leaves becoming “pinhole cameras” during the Annular Solar Eclipse. Though that particular post brings at least one visitor from Google search everyday, the majority of the 146 visitors did NOT come from a Google search on 11th of August.

Minor “Reddit” effect

What the statistics revealed to me was that someone has linked to my post from a comment in Reddit. Because websites like Reddit have a huge following, even a mere fraction of that community’s clicks will show a marked difference in traffic (read: Reddit)

News and social bookmarking websites like Digg, Delicious, Slashdot and Reddit are popular for slowing down or even closing down smaller sites temporarily when they flood a smaller site with traffic when a story/post becomes popular (read: Slashdot effect)

Motivation

This cannot even be called a “spike” if I was a professional blogger! Though the increase in traffic was a very minor & temporary one, it made me publish a new post after long time and it has also motivated me to post more regularly… let’s see

Peace.

The good news comes!

Then I muster up some energy and sit up. Deciding to go about my usual daily duties, I open the 1st message to read, which is a CNN news alert: “Google hinted today that they are making moves to get rid of Internet Explorer 6 for good, CNN”! What? wow, I thought. And I open the 2nd message…

Its a facebook status update from a web-designer friend of mine that says “Tired of fighting with IE6 bugs… I give up “, feeling sorry for him, I open the 3rd message, which is again a CNN news alert: “Google made a public statement saying that it has got positive feedback from yahoo, facebook, twitter, <add high-traffic BIG site names here>, about their intention of getting rid of IE6″!! What? that’s really interesting… wow, I get excited already.

More excitement awaits…

I get ready and rush to work. At the office, firing up my favorite browser… Firefox, I head straight to twitter, and see “Google” and “IE6″ trending! Now we are on to something really serious I think. While I read related news, I get that awesome text message. Yet another CNN alert that makes you have a loooong sigh of relief…

“Google and other top sites have decided to stop serving for IE6 starting from 04:45 GMT time”!!! Wow… thats my 3rd wow for the day and its a serious one. I just can’t believe that. How come it all happened so fast?.

I calculate the time quickly +05:30 from that GMT time means… it should be 10:15am in Sri Lanka. Whats the time now… oh It’s 10:12… just 3 minutes from now. I fire up my portable IE6 copy that I used to test sites on, and visit YouTube. I still see only a recommendation to upgrade the browser.

Believe in miracles!

I refresh the page… watch the time… 1 minute more… refresh the page… nothing new… 10 seconds more… refresh the page… times up! nothing new yet… refresh again… and… it takes time to load now… and…. oh! I see a new page…. a mostly empty page, which says: “Sorry, but your browser is too old. Please upgrade your browser using this link or, select an alternative browser to download from the following list”… yeahhhhh! They’ve done it!

I visit Google.com and see the exact same page. Google has provided the page to be linked, so that all site owners can use the same page when a user visits using IE6. Its gone… IE6 has gone forever… People would be forced to upgrade if they want to view their favorite websites. I jump up in excitement without thinking much of what I’m doing….

Ouch…

Ouch! That hurt. I hit something hard when jumping… oh it hurts… but.. how come my back hurts? err… where am I?… my back feels cold… Im on the floor!? in my room… oh my God… I’ve fallen off from bed… so it was all… a DREAM!

hmm… At least I saw it happening in my dream. Swift changes for nagging problems come only in dreams it seems. What a sweet dream

Note: That was not a real dream. No sleeping baby was harmed in the making of this post!