No, I’m not still sending out solicitations to buy Canadian Viagra. At least, I don’t think so? And no, Anne and I both still feel well. No, it is this blog has gone viral this time.
On Friday, WordPress picked the post, The Bike Stalker, as one of their featured posts for that day. It was one of their Freshly Pressed posts of the day. This created an almost viral experience for the little ole RegenAxe blog.
At mid-morning on Friday, I noticed a marked uptick in the number of hits that the blog was getting. I attributed it to the use of the word stalker in the post’s title. A co-worker tisk-tisked at what this said about our society. Then the comments started to come.
By then, it was starting to get a wee bit scary. But, all of the commenters were highly complementary. They liked the pictures or they liked to bike too or they’ve been to the Park and loved it. Some of the comments included a link back to the commenter’s own blog, but that’s OK too. I checked them all out and we share some mutual interests.
About lunchtime I got an email that explained it all. This email was from Joy of WordPress. My post had been promoted and was featured in their Freshly Pressed selection of posts. This was an unexpected honor. It is an honor, that I have often wished for though. WordPress hosts almost 300,000 blogs, which produce over 300,000 posts every day. WordPress only selects eleven posts every day. Here is a picture of yesterday’s Freshly Pressed webpage:
The following list preserves the links to the other ten posts that were also picked as Freshly Pressed on Friday. It is a rather eclectic list and features blogs from around the world. It is also an august assembly and I am proud to be included with them. Check them out:
- Plastic Bag from Agosto – This post describes a short film in which, Werner Herzog gives voice to a plastic bag’s existential crisis.
- The best tax for America from The Hannibal Blog – This post advocates a national sales tax.
- Beijing: Around Wangfujing from Jack Kaye – This is a travel-log post from China.
- Does Everyone Have to Run Because It’s Spring? from I Spy NYC – This post is all about running in New York.
- No chuckies for this guy from chin musik – This post talks about Chuck Taylor and Chucks sneakers.
- Don’t Read If You’re Ophidiophobic from Laurie Kendrick – This post is all bout really big snakes.
- The Reckoning from In Pursuit of Martha Points – Talks about illness and self recrimination. I love the effect that was done on the text.
- Tchaikovsky with wine glasses!! from MAD DASH COLLECTIVE – Checkout this YouTube video.
- Why Can’t I Just Shut Up? from More Than Serving Tea – This post talks about the pain of speaking before thinking. I visit this pain daily myself.
- Singapore: Work in progress from when the dust clears – Great pictures from the far side of the world.
So, like my blog, all these others have been lit up for a day. I found it to be a giddy experience. On the negative side, someone tried to phish my WordPress password. Such is the price of fame. I wonder if there will be any enduring effects from this opportunity? Time will tell. Until then, I’ll consider this to be an early blog anniversary present. This blog will be two years old next month.
This blog has gotten over 2,000 hits in the last twenty-four hours. Thank you WordPress for the promotion! Because the promoted link is to yesterday’s post and not directly to the blog, I’m going to leave yesterday’s header and favorite photo unchanged, at least as long as the promotion continues.
Congrats! I had noticed (the other day) the greater number of comments from names I hadn’t seen before on your blog, too. Wondered what had happened! At least it was a GOOD “what happened”!!
I have to agree, your photos are wonderful!
I really enjoyed your blog as well. WONDERFUL photos.
And I had the same experience – all these views at 7:30 in the morning, and went…huh? But I actually clicked into the graph to see where on earth all these hits were coming from and when I saw “wordpress.com” I knew. And then spent much of the morning hopping up and down. (It’s just so good I’m alone in the home office when I do that.)
If we each had a glass of champagne, I’d offer a toast! (8 am on a Saturday be damned!)
Very cool.
Beautiful photos! Unfortunately I don’t think I could hold a camera steady after a long bike ride 😉
@ Lori – A glass of champagne at 8 in the morning with a little bit of orange juice would be fun to share with all of us featured in yesterday’s Freshly Pressed!
“Congrats” Bud – good job! “Keep on keeping on” I saw a hint somewhere that Google was taking notice and their Board was considering an unsolicited buyout. Don’t sell cheap.
@ Kathy, I agree! Here, here! A round of champagne (with or without a wee bit of juice, after all, it’s already after 5 over on the east coast) to celebrate a stroke of good fortune shared with a talented group of people.
Truly, I’m still stunned…and was thrilled to find myself in such talented company.
And I’m no good at keeping my camera steady either, and I don’t even have the bike excuse. I just bought a tri-pod so my efforts will stop inducing motion sickness in my family. : )
Upon further reflection, I do believe that was supposed to read: “Hear, hear!” I promise I was not ordering all the Freshly Pressed Bloggers to report immediately. ; )