I was sitting down to post the MissPres annual report for 2011 just before midnight, since my neighbors were shooting off fireworks over my house, and lo and behold, I found that WordPress has already prepared an annual report for me.

Here’s an excerpt:

In 2011, there were 275 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 855 posts. There were 1017 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 306mb. That’s about 3 pictures per day.

Click here to see the complete report.

In addition to these fancy animated statistics, here’s a few more prosaic stats from this year:

General Stats (Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2011)

Page Views: 131,534 (220,904 all-time)
Posts: 275, down slightly from 288 last year (855 total)
Comments: 1655, down from last year’s 1951 (4215 total)
Busiest day: 1287 views on February 4, 2011 (this was for the Natchez poll, and strangely was on the same day as the previous year’s top post)
Busiest month: 12,150 (March 2011, also apparently poll-driven)
E-mail Subscribers: 160, from last year’s 64 (from 6 in 2009)

Nothing like a good bar graph to make you feel like you’ve accomplished something; here’s one showing the monthly views on the blog since almost the beginning in Feb 2009.

As you can see, this year has been all over the place, with some months showing big growth followed by months where everyone apparently just took it easy and stayed off the internet. Overall though, the level of views each month was much higher than in 2010, even in our off months.

As the WordPress report notes, some of 2011’s most-viewed posts were actually posts from previous years. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but WordPress spins it as “having staying power.” Several of the top posts are from the Abandoned Mississippi series, and others are from Tom Barnes’ hotel series and a few from the Katrina series, so we’ve decided from now on, we’ll try to post primarily articles about abandoned haunted hotels damaged in Katrina. Here’s some of the top posts, with their date of posting and their view totals just for this year.

Most Highly Rated Posts (Thumbs Up)

• 15–“Because for instance the Meridian Hotel is much older, we feel it’s best to tear it down (Aug 31, 2011)
• 13–A Tale of Two Domes: Mississippi and Arkansas (Aug 22, 2011)
• 13–101 MissPlaces–Vote Early, Vote Often for the Natchez District (Jan 21, 2011)
• 12–Feds Gone Mad (March 2, 2011)
• 12–Touring River Road in the Springtime (April 27, 2011)
• 12–Going Inside: War Memorial Building (Sept 9, 2011)

The WordPress annual report notes that Kathleen Jenkins, Blake Wintory, Gstone, crpiii, and TomL were the most active commenters on MissPres this year. WordPress suggests I send them a thank you note, so thanks for adding your thoughts and new information to the mix, y’all! Let’s have a group hug!

While we didn’t gain any full-time new authors this year, several new contributors added their voices to the mix, including Suzassippi, who posted about Mound Bayou in July; Mark Davis, who allowed us to re-print his articles about Mississippi architects from their original home in the Historical Reporter of Pearl River; Blake Wintory of Lakeport Plantation, who revealed the complex and sometimes very funny story about the construction of the two new capitols in Arkansas and Mississippi in his A Tale of Two Domes series in August; and of course, Frank Brooks, who gave us permission to reprint his 1983 Travelling by Trolley in Mississippi, and reintroduced us to the legacy of streetcars in towns large and small around the state.

Our regular authors kept on keeping on, with JRGordon faithfully keeping track of all the news fit to print, Thomas Rosell checking in with new research on the Coast and points north, and Tom Barnes reminding us of the glory years of hotels and motels around the state. W. White spent his last semester at MSU furiously writing up summaries of the Natchez District properties, among other posts. Hopefully, we’ll all be back for 2012 with new ideas and new research. If you have ever thought you’d like to contribute a post or two or become a regular author on MissPres, just let me know–we would love to add your perspective on Mississippi’s historic places!

On the preservation front, I noted last year that I still wasn’t sure whether digital media was very effective in actually preserving places we care about. In 2011, I think possibly we moved in a positive direction, when the Archaeology Conservancy bought Prospect Hill, a house brought to my attention back in the very earliest days of the blog by a concerned friend of the property, and which resulted in two posts highlighting its endangered status. Then in 2011, the Mississippi Heritage Trust took up the banner in its 10 Most Endangered Places lists in April, and Jessica Crawford saw the place and started moving quickly to save it. Every little bit counts, and I like to think that MissPres played a small role in getting Prospect Hill into its current situation, which is way more hopeful than its been in a long time.

2011 was the Year of the Poll, where we worked hard to narrow down our big list of properties to our final list of 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die. As I mentioned after the last poll, we’re going to be publishing the results from our number-crunching in the new year, probably in the third week of January, according to our crack statistician, who will be mining the data and all sorts of other things that statisticians do, to produce some interesting analysis, in addition to the final list.

It’s hard to believe but Preservation in Mississippi will be hitting its 3rd anniversary this February 8th (or is it the 9th?). Here’s hoping for a good 2012 for this little blog and for Mississippi preservationists!

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See earlier annual reports:

• 2010
• 2009

Categories: Historic Preservation