C#er : IMage: A Retrospective 2009 - 2015

C#er : IMageA RETROSPECTIVE: 2009 – 2015

JEREMY LIKNESS (@JEREMYLIKNESS)

2009: Technology BlogAlthough I had prior experience with fitness blogs, this was my first technology blog. I didn’t waste time with introductions and dove right in with my first post about Nhibernate and Complex Types for Native Keys in March 2009. I decided I would blog about topics I was working on (at the time, as Director IT of AirWatch).

Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

Visitors2009 was a short year and my posts were all over the place. In 2010 I moved from AirWatch to Wintellect and began writing about my business experience with Silverlight. This created an enormous surge of visitors. In 2012, the death of Silverlight was proclaimed and with it I saw the death of unique visitors to my blog. Recently my posts about real world experience building HTML5 SPA applications with JavaScript and AngularJS seem to be drawing people back.

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2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Unique Visitors by Year

2010: Silverlight2010 was the year of Silverlight. All of my Wintellect projects were Silverlight related and my blog posts combined with projects and speaking engagements led to a surge of the most unique visitors in the history of C#er : IMage. My “MVVM Explained” would go on to be the most read article of all time, but the 2nd most popular article that year was a biased defense of Silverlight’s future.

Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

ReferralsThe source of referrals to C#er : IMage has changed dramatically over the years.

◦ 2009: CodeProject.com, SilverlightShow.net, and GeeksWithBlogs.net were my top 3 referrers

◦ 2010: My new job combined with the popularity of Silverlight drove traffic from forums.Silverlight.net, Wintellect.com, and by organic searches through Google.com

◦ 2011: Support at forums.Silverlight.net continued to be a top referrer, with syndicated articles driving traffic from team.Silverlight.net and answers to questions referencing my blog posts at StackOverflow.com

◦ 2012: Still linked to from froms.Silverlight.net, a number of referrals also came through Stackoverflow.com, and for the first time Twitter’s link shortening service (t.co) was the 3rd highest referrer

◦ 2013: With my renewed focus on Windows 8 traffic shifted to come from social.TechNet.Microsoft.com, StackOverflow.com, and Social.MSDN.Microsoft.com (mostly Windows 8 topics)

◦ 2014: Twitter was my #1 referrer, followed by social.TechNet.Microsoft.com and CodeProject.com

2011: Death Spiral2011 was the real start of Silverlight’s death spiral in popularity. My MVVM article remained the #1 read, and #2 was a videoabout dependency injection. The #3 article of 2011 was a generic C# article comparing properties and fields.

Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

MobilityGoogle shows less than a fraction of a percentage of visitors to my blog used a mobile device in 2009. The number of phone users increased steadily then ironically dropped as tablet access increased between 2012 and 2013. In 2014 you can see mobile access using both phones and tablets literally exploded – 1 in 10 of my visitors accessed the site from a mobile device. Part of that is due to improvements to the blog to make it more mobile-friendly, but no one can ignore the surge of devices being used by consumers now to access the Internet anytime from anywhere.

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2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

% Phone and Tablet Visits

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2012: RebrandingIn 2012 I struggled to rebrand my blog to move on from Silverlight. My focus initially was Windows 8 based on the continued support for XAML and C#. Top articles included a tip about using symbols for icons and facts about ARM and the then-called Metro mode of Windows 8. I also published the best-selling book Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML.

Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

A Tale of Three BrowsersIt’s interesting to see how browser use has changed over the years.

In 2009, the most used browser to access my blog was Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox with Chrome a distant third.

In 2011, Chrome began gaining momentum. Internet Explorer remained the top browser, but Chrome was second and Firefox trailed as the third most used browser.

By 2014, Chrome had established a firm lead by a large margin, followed by Internet Explorer. Firefox held onto the #3 spot.

2009: IE 47.32%, Firefox 35.79%, Chrome 12.06%.

2014: Chrome 58.63%, IE 16.42%, Firefox 15.24%.

2013: Dead EndIn 2013 I realized that my focus on Windows 8 was a dead end. Customers simply weren’t building Windows 8 apps and user group attendance for Windows 8 talks dropped dramatically. Interest had shifted to cloud and web. Fortunately although I wrote and blogged about Windows 8, my day job involved a massive project that leveraged TypeScript, JavaScript, and AngularJS.

Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

All Time StatsI am passionate about learning and growth. That is not only one of the core values at my current company, iVision, but has been a driving factor behind my career. Not just my own learning and growth, but empowering others to excel in this field. As I reflect on several years of writing hundreds of blog posts I feel very blessed.

During its lifetime C#er : IMage blog has reached nearly half a million unique visitors with over a million page views. Only 1/3 of total traffic has been from the U.S., with the balance coming from India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Russia, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, and several other countries.

The top three keywords of all time driving traffic to my blog are “MVVM,” “managed extensibility framework,” and my own name, “Jeremy Likness.”

The top article on my blog, MVVM Explained, has been viewed nearly 100,000 times.

2014: HTML5, JavaScript, and Angular2014 truly has been the year of Angular. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that Angular has grown in popularity given its key features mirror those of Silverlight, namely data-binding and a clean separation of declarative presentation markup from imperative code-based logic.

Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

2014, 2015: Look Back, Move Forward2014 was an exciting year. My blog began to grow again after the large hit related to the end of Silverlight. Although “MVVM Explained” continued to be the number one viewed article along with two other Windows 8 articles, AngularJS also made its way into the top 5. Popular articles included The 10 Reasons Web Developers Should Learn AngularJS, my 5-part series The Top 5 Mistakes AngularJS Developers Make, and the article that ties Silverlight and AngularJS together, Angular: The Modern HTML5 Answer to Silverlight’s MVVM.

Looking ahead to 2015 you can expect more of the same. I will continue to write about relevant topics that I see in my daily consulting with businesses as they modernize their application platforms and migrate to a mobile-first, cloud-ready platform using technologies like JavaScript and Angular to expand their reach. I also hope to share more about emerging technologies like Microsoft’s Appication Insights, cross-platform development with Apache Cordova, and take a step back to explore higher level topics like Application Lifecycle Management. Of course, the only reason the blog exists is for you to read it, so I welcome all suggestions and requests.

THANK YOU!It is fun to take a look back at this blog over the years, but the most important fact is that it would not be possible without you. I deeply appreciate all of you who take time out of their busy day to read these articles, share them with friends and associates,post comments, provide feedback and contribute content of their own. I look forward to sharing more in 2015 and beyond!

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