DAY AGO the site where I spend the most time served 584,269 Web requests. The one Rianne leads served 1,638,626 requests. It’s not an all-time record, but in recent years we have more such days in those sites.

While we block slop bots, it’s hard to block them all definitively, so some of that traffic if not most of it might be bots. That’s how today’s Web is. It should not be, but it is.

bout 10 hours from now Techrights turns 20.

“Tomorrow anniversary,” one person reminded me today, it being “20 years……”

He said I should be “careful and enjoy life”.

I appreciated that people remembered the age of the site, the date of its anniversary, and also recognised the risks associated while acknowledging that it is enjoyable in spite of these risks.

Let’s hope for another 20 happy years in Techrights.

he coming “Birthday” or “Anniversary” of Techrights is only days away and I didn’t prepare anything special because the team at Techrights still believes that it’s better to spend a year building as a form of celebration.

Birthdays are typically a “kids’ thing” – a special day for a child to feel special or the “centre of attention”.

Birthdays are more important at numbers like 10 or 20…

Techrights is turning 20. Birthday? No.

SSL, schestowitz.com:

* Not viewed traffic includes traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes.

No SSL, schestowitz.com:

* Not viewed traffic includes traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes.

20+ years ago it looked very, very different.

raffic is something everyone online wants, aims for, even craves.

Not road traffic. Traffic on the Web.

However, slop scrapers/bots are a major nuisance that eats away at underfunded sites.

Days ago I had to ask the webhost to increase my bandwidth quota. They did so free of charge, gratis. I’ve been with them for over 22 years!

Traffic in tuxmachines.org and techrights.org also grew recently. In Gemini, for example, gemini.techrights.org served 682695 requests in the past 5-6 days. In gemini.tuxmachines.org 209418 requests. On the Web, techrights.org served 507210 yesterday and 422396 the day before that. In tuxmachines.org it was 1028214 yesterday and 1285718 two days ago.

For those sites our community does not have bandwidth limits, but that might change in the future. Thankfully we are funded by an eager collective.

Keeping traffic down, especially undesirable traffic, is a desirable thing.

HTTPS:

wenty-two-year-old sites or blogs are rarely still active (or online at all). My personal site (not in this domain) turns 25 next year, but this blog is 22.

With about 7 days left in this month, the traffic this month is the heaviest (or highest) this year. The blog’s readership has also gone up, as I write here more regularly again.

When I resumed regularly blogging (here, not elsewhere) I didn’t know if it would catch on. It’s no longer 2004 and many people waste away their lives in social control media.

I wish more people would start or resume blogging. It takes more time (to choose words carefully, add links and so on), but it tends to pay off.

ODAY we are two weeks away from 20 years of Techrights and above is my birthday cake for 40.

For nearly half my life I’ve written for Techrights. That says less about my age and more about how important Techrights has been to me.

I sometimes say that the Web won’t last for much longer (several reasons for this, not the subject of this blog post), but Techrights can outlive the Web and I hope to do it for another 20 years.

his past summer I decided to write more in this blog. So I did. I kept true to that promise.

In retrospect or upon reflection it was a good decision that is rewarding in many ways, not limited to “traffic” (which really isn’t the goal).

I should have done this sooner.

I said something similar in 2022 when quitting all social control media altogether.

Should have done that much sooner.

What a waste time that was.

Writing more here means keeping the s/n ratio higher in other sites.

arlier today I shared some statistics for the first half of October. Earlier this year I decided to breathe fresher life (or air) into schestowitz.com, which I sort of neglected because I was busy in other sites.

This blog is now 22 (Harvey’s too will be 22, but he passed away almost 4 years ago; I still miss him) and I am emboldened by the feedback I receive on it.

I hope more people will get back to blogging. They just need to quit social control media. They waste time there.

HIS year I began blogging a lot more in here – in a blog which I started 22 years ago. The site was not “dead” at any point, it always attracted some traffic.

When it comes to statistics, one lingering issue is that there are many subdomains and AWstats already measures HTTP separately from HTTPS.

This is HTTPS for schestowitz.com alone:

HTTP for schestowitz.com alone:

Combining the two, so far this month it’s about 350,000 visitors. Many are bots. AWStats isn’t good at detecting these.

But of course a respect quotient/metric matters more than traffic, as being a troll or showing nudes gets one traffic, and the hourly rates of escorts is high too (seems like some sites are de facto “online” escort sites).

My goal is not traffic but positive impact.