It’s been another eventful year for CabbieBlog.

You have probability noticed yet another change in CabbieBlog’s appearance. As I mentioned previously hosting for all these keystrokes and pictures with CabbieBlog, now in its 12th year in cyberspace, comes at a cost.

A domain name to find your work on the internet; the purchase of back-up support should the site become corrupted; a speed optimization plugin, a selection of typefaces; Patreon as a means for any fans to support the work; the yearly purchase of an SSL certificate to give the domain name an https prefix required by Google in its rankings; and updating PHP, the programming language used to maintain WordPress required for the second time in a year. Added to that protection from hacking, viruses, and malware. This entailed the removal of someone’s nasties inserted within my missives last year, an expensive and a problem which, believe it or not, got CabbieBlog banned from the internet.

Now, excuse me, but with all that protection the site should have been as sound as the Bank of England. Not so! More malware had been inserted by the back door into CabbieBlog.

So with all those excuses, and in part as an apology for the site’s more basic appearance, I have reverted to CabbieBlog’s second incarnation (the first was a defunct platform now no longer lamented), which will be similar, but different.

So with those caveats here are the annual blogging statistics for 2019. As before, with the data amassed over the last year (taken from both sites), I’ve broken it down into bite-sized chunks with comparable figures for the previous year.



Blog visitors and page views

The numbers of visitors has decreased, but and those willing to loiter around CabbieBlog have increased quite substantially, which is been very encouraging. (Average hit rate per visitor: 2018 – 1.737; 2019 – 1.8117).

2018
Visitors – 34,255
Page views – 59,503

2019
Visitors – 22,994
Page views – 41,659



CabbieBlog’s readers from abroad

The different countries whose residents have viewed CabbieBlog again include Jersey and Guernsey as if they were sovereign countries and curiously the European Union with 497, a huge drop from the 1,166 visits last year, presumably the result of us being released from their clutches. The United States leads our curious cousins with 4,773 a fall since last year’s 12,851 hits. The total number of countries who checked into CabbieBlog appears to have dropped this year, but as I’m collecting data across two sites, I might have missed the occasional visitor from a foreign land.

2018 – 137

2019 – 117



Number of comments

The yardstick of a blog must be, how many of its readers decided to metaphysically put pen to paper and comment. To all of you, again a huge thank you for your encouragement or discouragement. Your comments keep me submitting posts for your perusal. Social media is increasingly reactive these days, and a much smaller proportion of people now write long-form posts providing the original material that everyone else comments upon. But at least what comments CabbieBlog receives are intelligent, relevant and insightful. I’m delighted, obviously.

2018 – 124

2019 – 94



Number of ‘likes’

It would appear that some of you have taken to the cyberverse to mark your approval of CabbieBlog in the form of a ‘like’, again a huge thank you for increasing that number by over six-fold.

2018 – 12

2019 – 79



Followers of CabbieBlog

My e-mail updates only include a brief description so many of your will have had to peruse the site to read the full post. I can’t calculate how many times you have taken the trouble to follow these notifications and read my incitful posts, but thanks for following CabbieBlog.

2018 – 1,252

2019 – 1,248



Posts written

Much of this year’s output is re-publishing old posts. Many are now being read for the first time and I have received many compliments. So the total posts and number of words do not reflect new writing. Having said that, included are 52 new trivia posts, published on Sundays. For years my Journal has lain undiscovered as a page. As an experiment, starting January 2020, every Wednesday I’m publishing the The Weekly Whinge partly from my Journal along with new material; in addition, taken from my old site, will be London in Quotations, published every Monday.

2018– 156

2019 – 157




Most viewed and least viewed posts and pages

It has to be said that some subjects take on a life of their own while others just sit in cyberspace minding their own business. At the bottom of the table lie many posts with only one view a year, and some I suspect just sit there patiently waiting to be noticed.

2018
Highest post
London’s top secret tower – 1,440
Lowest Post
London Trivia: Bear fight– 1
Highest page
Green cab shelters – 2,328
Lowest page
Time Out – 34

2019
Highest post
London myths debunked – 2,295
Lowest Post
Queen of Hell – 1
Highest page
The Knowledge – 4,536
Lowest page
Time Out – 12




Pages written

Last year due to having to comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a number of new pages had to be written, this year no new pages have appeared on CabbieBlog.

2018 – 3

2019 – 0




Number of words written

As I mentioned before I have written substantially less this year so the word count includes new material and re-published work, I have also recalculated the words written on Sunday’s trivia.

2018
Words – 71,329
Characters – 415,241

2019
Words – 80,757
Characters (with spaces) – 468,385
Characters (without spaces) – 386,545
Paragraphs – 2,335




Referrers

If you ignore the search engines (with Google clocking up an impressive 19,103 hits). The next highest referrers are Twitter at 443 and behind them is Facebook at 255.

2018
The Hackney Hack – 48
The Telephone Box – 46

2019
Spitalfields Life – 46
The Hackney Hack – 12




In conclusion

This post is, of course, my highlight of the year. Unfortunately my readers don’t share my enthuiasm. Last year only 47 of you bothered to click on to read Statistics 2018.

It’s been an eventful year for CabbieBlog. In February I retired promising to write more insightful posts. About then, I invited readers to become patrons, with the incentive of gaining access to extracts from Pootling around London.

[R]egular readers might have noticed that the site’s typography has changed, it was something I’ve been wanting to do for some time. I am using Noto Serif Regular as it is a classic font style that’s perfectly suited for reading longer articles as it was designed for displaying on a website. Contrasting Noto serif font is Montserrat Bold a stylish sans face for use in headlines both displayed in 16pt with 1.6 leading, a combination with abundant white space should make it even faster to read and absorb the information, including this fascinating post. Whether reading on a laptop, tablet or phone I feel the new layout is considerably easier to read.

Here’s the annual blogging statistics for 2018. As before, with the data amassed over the last year, I’ve broken it down into bite-sized chunks with comparable figures for the previous year.



Blog visitors and page views

The numbers of visitors have increased slightly and those willing to loiter around CabbieBlog have increased quite substantially, which is been very encouraging. (Average hit rate per visitor: 2017 – 1.630; 2018 – 1.737).

2017
Visitors – 32,951
Page views – 53,718

2018
Visitors – 34,255
Page views – 59,503



CabbieBlog’s readers from abroad

The slight increase of foreign visitors could be the result of residents of poorer countries gaining access to the web, or that CabbieBlog is getting recognised around the world. The different countries whose residents have viewed CabbieBlog again include Jersey and Guernsey as if they were sovereign countries and curiously the European Union with 1,166 visits, a huge rise from the 308 visits last year, presumably the result of what they are about to lose when we Brexit. The United States leads our curious cousins with 12,851 a substantial rise from last year’s 7,727 hits.

2017 – 131

2018 – 137



Number of comments

The yardstick of a blog must be, how many of its readers decided to metaphysically put pen to paper and comment. To all of you, again a huge thank you for your encouragement or discouragement. Your comments keep me submitting posts for your perusal. Social media is increasingly reactive these days, and a much smaller proportion of people now write long-form posts providing the original material that everyone else comments upon. But at least what comments CabbieBlog receives are intelligent, relevant and insightful. I’m delighted, obviously.

2017 – 76

2018 – 124



Number of ‘likes’

It would appear that some of you have taken to the cyberverse to mark your approval of CabbieBlog in the form of a ‘like’, a huge thank you. In 2017 CabbieBlog was ‘liked’ less than for 2016, but curiously as I write this in mid-February 2019 CabbieBlog has already attracted 12 ‘likes’.

2017 – 38

2018 – 12



Followers of CabbieBlog

I seem to have found a number of followers who were hiding that had previously signed-up for regular e-mail updates. My e-mail updates only include a brief description so many of your will have had to peruse the site to read the full post. I can’t calculate how many times you have taken the trouble to follow these notifications and read my incitful posts, but thanks for following CabbieBlog.

2017 – 174

2018 – 1,252



Posts written

Having promised to produce more during retirement, due to a trapped nerve, I lost the use of my hands, clearly, this restricted my ability to write, and so I resorted to re-publishing old posts. Many are now being read for the first time and I have received many compliments. Before you all start writing ‘get well’ messages I am now on the road to recovery. So the total posts and number of words do not reflect new material. Having said that, included are new 52 trivia posts, published on Sundays.

2017– 157

2018 – 156




Most viewed and least viewed posts and pages

It has to be said that some subjects take on a life of their own while others just sit in cyberspace minding their own business. At the bottom of the table lie many posts with only one view a year, and some I suspect just sit there patiently waiting to be noticed.

2017
Highest post
London’s top secret tower – 2,295
Lowest Post
White bikes – 1
Highest page
Green cab shelters – 4,536
Lowest page
Time Out – 12

2018
Highest post
London’s top secret tower – 1,440
Lowest Post
London Trivia: Bear fight– 1
Highest page
Green cab shelters – 2,328
Lowest page
Time Out – 34




Pages written

Due to having to comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a number of new pages have had to be written.

2017 – 8

2018 – 3




Number of words written

As I mentioned before I have written substantially less this year so the word count includes new material and re-published work. It does not include Sunday’s trivia posts.

2017
Words – 71,809
Characters – 408,300

2018
Words – 71,329
Characters – 415,241




Referrers

If you ignore the search engines (with Google clocking up an impressive 25,311 hits). The next highest referrers are Twitter at 411 and just behind them is Facebook at 347.

2017
Taxileaks – 223
Londontopia – 157

2018
The Hackney Hack – 48
The Telephone Box – 46




Sitting in the back

Now retired there has been no ‘bums on seats’.

2017
Thandie Newton (actor)
Ol Parker (writer, director, producer)




In conclusion

This post is, of course, my highlight of the year. Unfortunately my readers don’t share my enthuiasm. Last year only 13 of you bothered to click on to read Statistics 2017.

A while ago I posted that I couldn’t write and so was intending to repost some of CabbieBlog’s ‘best bits’. Not wishing to remain idle I have been redesigning the site and I’m super excited about the result.

[T]he current design has been used since the 2012 Olympics and although I still like the layout I’ve always felt that the typography was a little difficult to read being displayed in such a small sans typeface.

New typefaces

For the first time in the history of CabbieBlog, the text font will be a super clear and easy-to-read serif font. So what’s a serif font? Serifs are the little ‘flags’ you see coming off the edges of letters. I am using Noto Serif Regular as it is a classic font style that’s perfectly suited for reading longer articles as it was designed for displaying on a website.

Contrasting Noto serif font is Montserrat Bold a stylish sans face for use in headlines, subheads, and more. This combination with abundant white space should make it even faster to read and absorb the information you find here on CabbieBlog.

You will probably notice as the typeface is now considerably larger – the text size is 16pt – it is more easily read, but importantly the line spacing has been widened to 1.6ems which gives more ‘white’ between the horizontal alignment, thereby giving more white space. The new design adds a feeling of light and openness even though the site features the same amount of information, it’s spacious, easy on the eye and clutter-free.

Free fonts

All this has been made economically possible by Google fonts, this huge resource of over 800 typefaces is available completely free, used along with a little piece of open-source software I have been able to access and use these fonts.

For those still reading CabbieBlog on last century’s technology, you will have noticed your laptop or pc shows the sidebar with headings in the more modern Voltaire typeface above text in Helvetica bold, displayed in grey, which should make this important information more legible.

Once being a typesetter I couldn’t drop the dropped letter, so to speak, which I’ve always liked to see displayed at the start of an important paragraph. The new drop letter is now in grey matching the rest of the page, and importantly those more trendy followers reading my missives on their phone can now see the large drop character displayed, instead of a capital letter surrounded by brackets, which for many could have been confusing.

Check out the archives

With almost 10 years worth of content, CabbieBlog has a huge library of information on London: the archive with nearly 1,000 posts is easily accessible; the large database about the Cabbie’s Green Shelters has been broken up into six sections and for those generous enough to become patrons they have an easily accessible route to their exclusive content.

Please tell me what you think in the comments section below.

Here’s the annual blogging statistics for 2017 and the goals for this year, which, incidentally will be CabbieBlog’s 10th year in cyberspace. According to research, there are over 2 million blog posts published daily (MarketingProfs), and while the average blog post takes 3 hours 16 minutes to write (OrbitMedia), having spent all that time working, the median average time spent reading an article is a mere 37 seconds (NewsCred).

[S]O, GIVEN that, I’m mighty pleased you have reached this far in what is CabbieBlog’s most self-regarding post of the year.

I have now retired after pushing my cab around London for twenty-two years. Decisions made in private by senior managers from Transport for London have reduced the once finest taxi service in the world into a profession only the desperate would now wish to enter. With a vastly reduced income combined with the 18-hour gridlock on London’s roads, I felt it was time to go.

Surprisingly many are still interested in becoming a London cabbie for at Christmas and New Year CabbieBlog always sees a spike in hits on anything I’ve written about The Knowledge. Clearly, my ‘Back of my Cab’ is not likely to be updated, nor will I be writing for the black cab company, Radio Taxis as they are now no more, swallowed up by German company Gett.

Relieved of my obligations will, in theory, give me more time to research and write posts. Anyhow enough of my ramblings, all you want to do is get on with digesting the figures from last year.

As before, with the data amassed over the last year, I’ve broken it down into bite-sized chunks with comparable figures for the previous year.

Blog visitors and page views
The numbers of visitors have decreased slightly and those willing to loiter around CabbieBlog have also decreased proportionately, indicating that I need to make the site more interesting. (Average hit rate per visitor: 2016 – 1.701; 2017 – 1.630).

2016
Visitors – 33,072
Page views – 56,276

2017
Visitors – 32,951
Page views – 53,718

CabbieBlog’s readers from abroad
Many of you might not be foreign, but simply ex-pats longing to reminisce about the good times spent sitting in the back of a London cab. The different countries whose residents have viewed CabbieBlog include Jersey and Guernsey as if they were sovereign countries and curiously the European Union with 308 visits, first it isn’t a country and therefore WordPress haven’t given it a flag. The United States leads our curious cousins with 7,727 hits and Germany follows with 927.

2016 – 133

2017 – 131

Number of comments
The yardstick of a blog must be, how many of its readers decided to metaphysically put pen to paper and comment. To all of you, a huge thank you for your encouragement or discouragement. Your comments keep me submitting posts for your perusal. Astoundingly Dave seems to be the keenest by posting a comment 2 hours 58 minutes into this New Year. The people who leave comments on blogs have changed. In CabbieBlog’s early days most of the people who left comments were also bloggers, adding to the discussion. Today most of the people who leave comments have no focused online voice, they solely want to comment on what others have written. Social media is increasingly reactive these days, and a much smaller proportion of people now write long-form posts providing the original material that everyone else comments upon. But at least what comments CabbieBlog receives are intelligent, relevant and insightful. I’m delighted, obviously.

2016 – 39

2017 – 76

Number of ‘likes’
It would appear that some of you have taken to the cyberverse to mark your approval of CabbieBlog, a huge thank you.

2016 – 2

2017 – 38

Followers of CabbieBlog
For those of you who can’t be bothered or don’t have the time, to check out my missives, you lot would have signed-up for regular e-mail updates or get a heads up from an RSS feed, Bloglovin’ or WordPress, whose simplicity allows thousands to read this blog without ever visiting it. As far as you’re concerned I’m no longer writing a continuous story, I’m generating atomised blog posts – which makes a complete mockery of attempting to count visitor numbers accurately anyway. I can’t calculate how many times you have taken the trouble to follow these notifications and read my rantings, but thanks for following CabbieBlog.

2016 – 130

2017 – 174

Posts written
This should be posts published rather than posts written, as sometimes (about once a month) a Guest Post has been uploaded.

2016– 105

2017 – 157


Most viewed and least viewed posts and pages
It has to be said that some subjects take on a life of their own while others just sit in cyberspace minding their own business. At the bottom of the table lie many posts with only one view a year, and some I suspect just sit there patiently waiting to be noticed.

2016
Highest post
Ten Surprising Facts about the London Black Cab – 1,575
Lowest Post
A Sign of the Times – 1
Highest page
Green cab shelters – 3,997
Lowest page
National Geo – 3

2017
Highest post
London’s top secret tower – 2,295
Lowest Post
White bikes – 1
Highest page
Green cab shelters – 4,536
Lowest page
Time Out – 12


Pages written
Once in a while, I’ll get round to writing a page that remains visible permanently and not buried below the three weekly posts. This year I’ve broken CabbieBlog’s most read page Green Cab Shelters into six digestible chunks which have obviously increased this year’s tally. Here are the number pages I’ve been bothered to write this year.

2016 – 2

2017 – 8


Number of words written
I endeavour to keep posts down to 500 words – we’re back now to the aforementioned attention span of 37 seconds – this I usually manage to achieve, unless I come over all animated about the article’s subject matter. The rise in this year’s word rate derives from now publishing an extra post every Sunday.

2016
Words – 64,792
Characters – 375,629

2017
Words – 71,809
Characters – 408,300


Referrers
If you ignore the search engines (with Google clocking up an impressive 24,763 hits). The next highest referrers are Facebook at 603 and just behind them Twitter at 561. This year, reflecting how more engaged my colleagues are, now that the trade is being subsumed by the avalanche of private hire, Taxileaks reached the top slot. Unless CabbieBlog is mentioned in an article somewhere else that trends next year, I suspect this will continue.

2016
Londontopia – 373
Taxileaks – 267

2017
Taxileaks – 223
Londontopia – 157


Sitting in the back
I devote a page of CabbieBlog to my bums on seats and in the past, I’ve enjoyed the company, among others, of John Hurt and Barbara Winsor. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recognise most sportsmen, or women, so they are not so faithfully recorded – although I did once see Boris Becker in the back. This year will be the last CabbieBlog is seen on London’s roads, so my final ‘Bums on Seats’ falls to one of our most talented actors and her screenwriter husband.

2016
Nobody of note
I’ll keep a better lookout next year

2017
Thandie Newton (actor)
Ol Parker (writer, director, producer)


In conclusion
This post has certainly taken longer than the mean average of 3 hours 16 minutes. For me, it is, of course, the highlight of my writing year. Thank you for continuing to support CabbieBlog and for having the tenacity to reach the end of what must be the year’s most tedious post.