SpoonGraphics

Two Years of Blog.SpoonGraphics

Two Years of Blog.SpoonGraphics

In April 2007 Blog.SpoonGraphics was created as a small personal project, now two years on it’s still growing nicely and continually leads to more and more surprises and opportunities for me. Let’s take a look at some stats outlining it’s growth over these past two years.

Blog.SpoonGraphcs

Long time subscribers may remember the posts One Year of Blog.SpoonGraphics, or maybe even Six Months of Blog.SpoonGraphics. In each of these posts I presented some of the milestones the site has seen. So, how have things changed recently?

Average stats of late:

Traffic Statistics

Average visits per day: 13,000
Average pageviews per day: 33,000
Top Content: 15 Tutorials for Recreating Authentic Photo Effects & Create a Simple Vibrant Light Effect in Photoshop
RSS Subscribers: 18,000
Highest Traffic Peak: Wednesday March 4th – 31,311 visitors

StumbleUpon has remained to be a good source of traffic, however it now rests in third place with the majority of visitors coming from Google search (keywords spoon graphics, spoongraphics, blog spoon graphics) and as direct traffic which suggests major development of the site as a recognisable brand.

Evolution of Blog.SpoonGraphics

Version One – April 07 to August 07

Blog.SpoonGraphics Version 1

The original theme was quickly put together using elements of my portfolio website design at the time. I can’t say was anything too spectacular but it did receive some inclusions in various CSS galleries!

Version Two – August 07 – August 08

Blog.SpoonGraphics Version 2

The website design you all recognise has been around since August 07, and I’m still pretty happy with it! The large page header with various vector elements still receives praise and has been included in a bunch of design roundups, all of which I’m really appreciative of.

Version Three – August 08 – December 08

Blog.SpoonGraphics Version 3

Verison three of the Blog.SpoonGraphics design saw some little tweaks and changes, including a revised sidebar and a couple of jQuery effects. Although the major addition was the creation of an About page, which started the development of myself personally as Chris Spooner giving further exposure as a designer.

Version Four – December 08 to Present

Blog.SpoonGraphcs

In December 08 the site saw a complete rebuild, but is still rocking the semi-original header and footer designs. The latest set of changes included a wider content area and refreshed sidebar, as well as more attention to the styling of individual page elements. The largest change was behind the scenes in terms of freshly written XHTML and CSS coding, and some little changes to help reduce server load and requests.

Technical Stats

Powered by: WordPress
Hosted on: 1GB VPS from Slicehost (with appreciated assistance from @crouchy) + Amazon S3 Storage.
Bandwidth generated per month: 430gb (prior to moving images to Amazon S3)

Recent Blog Related Achievements

Last year I talked about Blog.SpoonGraphics achieving an inclusion in Web Designer Magazine issue 157. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Blog.SpoonGraphics having its posts recommended and featured on various blogs and podcasts, as well as some personal blog related achievements:

A word from me…


Two Years of Blog.SpoonGraphics from Chris Spooner on Vimeo.

Given the special occasion, I thought it would be a good opportunity to create this (slightly cringeworthy) video of thanks to introduce myself in person. Video blogging was a direction I’ve been looking to take a dabble in recently, especially since seeing a bunch of fellow design bloggers also giving it a try. I suppose this is where I say ‘please excuse the nerves/awkwardness’, sitting on your own (well, with the company of the cat…) and talking to a webcam is strangely weird and difficult. No doubt I will improve over time. Stay tuned for some further vlogs and a screencast tutorial or two in the future.

So overall, I’m really stoked about the development of the site and I’m looking forward to continuing it into the future. Thankyou to all the subscribers, readers, advertisers, Twitter followers, fellow bloggers and everyone who has offered their social media vote on the articles and tutorials here at Blog.SpoonGraphics.

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70 Comments

  1. Congratulations Chris – I wish you the best with your blog and everything elese. Good to see that you also created a “personal video”, finally showing yourself “talking” to the public.

    Oh, and you “forgot” our last chatting conversation (Discussing blueprints with Chris Spooner) ;).

    Keep up the great work!

  5. Haha, where did that cat magically spring from?

    Some fantastic stats there, Chris. You’ve done an excellent job getting Spoon Graphics to where it is today, and I’m sure things will just get better.

  6. Hey Chris,

    thanks for two years of blog.spoongraphics.co.uk. Keep up the great work and a special “thank you” for sharing all this knowledge with us :)

    greetings,
    thomas

  11. Congratulations for Two years of success, I’ve been following only for some months but this is one of my must have blogs, keep going on that way and i’m already waiting for a screencast tutorial.
    And thanks for all your great content

  19. Congrats Chris on an excellent blog that as really grown into ‘a must view’ blog for Graphic and Web Designers.

    Thanks for the stats too, really interesting to see what can be achieved with a great blog.

    Keep up the great work and I’ll be more than happy to keep voting/promoting you via social media.

  21. really nice to have find your blog since march.

    Great articles and interesting links for inspiration.
    Thanks to be there man ! You rock my inspiration :)

  22. Way to go on the two years! That cat was just adorable! My kitten does the same thing when I am trying to be a serious blogger. :)

  23. Well done Chris. I’ve been following your blog for almost the whole two years and my main thankyou is for your writing style. You are able to teach to all skill levels and I believe that is a skill that you do not come across very often.

    Good luck with the continuation of Blog.SpoonGraphics, the vlogs and Line25.

    Craig

  24. Congrads on 2 years, Chris! I found you on a list of designers on twitter & was blown away by your talent & great site! Keep it up!

  25. Congratulations!
    And thank you for the good articles!
    Keep rocking!

    Greetings from Brasil!

  26. Thanks a bunch for stopping by everyone. I’m amazed at how much the site has grown over the two years – Looking forward to pumping out some cool content in the near future!

  30. Congratulations Chris! You continue to be a tremendous source of inspiration to me. Your posts are so helpful! Work like yours makes web design fun.

  31. Congrats Chris! My site will be celebrating its 1st birthday next month. I hope that I’m half as successful as you have been when it reaches #2.

  33. Hey Chris, happy to follow ur great Blog! Congrats! Hope u will continue follow this way!

  35. I just found your website a week ago and I think it’s wonderful! I will be spending a lot of time with your tutorials and articles in the future.
    Congratulations on the two year milestone!

  37. Indeed congratulations mate, its great to see you still achieve great ranking and only getting more and more well known through your blog. Cheers to the future!

  40. I would like to say, about the google keysearch, it seems a lot of people are like me, always forgetting your domain or too lazy to type it in, might I suggest a domain to just redirect here? thats shorter to type and easier to remember?

  41. Congratulations Chris! Nice!

    I only recently discovered your blog [about 3 months ago] and the first few days were just spent browsing through pages of posts. It was your fish & pirate tutorial that helped me get my head around Illustrator [Thnx a bunch for that!]. You really have some great content, no wonder it does so well. I wish you many more anniversaries and looking forward to cool stuff being churned out of that grounded head of yours! :-)

  42. Hi Chris,

    Congratuluations, I love the site and think you’ve done such a good job of building blogspoongraphics, you should be really proud of what you’ve achieved.

    Oh and nice cat! Haha.

    Danny Hinde.

  46. Congratulations on hitting the two year milestone, Chris! May it continue on a forever distant journey! Always enjoy reading your posts and the vlogs are a great new medium. Nice to hear/see you, as well as the cat ;) All the best!

    Alex | @ZenElements

  49. Congrats on all your achievements, it’s been great to see your site grow over the past 2 years and also good to see the voice behind the blog. Keep it up!

  56. Congratulations Chris. The blog is great, I check it every day and the effort you put into your articles, particularly the vector/Illustrator tutorials is really appreciated.

    Nice touch with the cat!

  57. Congratulations! Your blog indeed advanced a lot. I’m reading it already quite long, but somehow didn’t ever leave a comment before… Excuse moi. ^__^ And, I’m glad to see some familiar elements in your first design, it gives a hope.

    P.S. Yeah, you looked a bit strung up first, your cat saved you though. I love cats. ;)

  58. Congratulations Chris! Well deserved citations. SpoonGraphics has indeed evolved into an invaluable source of design goodness. It’s just keeps getting better and better. Keep on.

  60. Congratulations Chris,
    Spoon is an island of style in a sea of bland, a fantastic resource, and has been a big help in my work.
    Thanks!

  62. Congratulations! Keep up the great work. Those click rates are very impressive, bet that didn’t feel possible two years ago ;)
    You are an inspiration to our students.
    Thank You!

  63. Congrats on the two years. I’ve been a fan for quite some time (forget when, which means its been a good ride).

    Inspiration online is at times hard to find, and sites like yours removes a lot of the muse friction.

    –
    Scott Barnes
    Rich Platforms Product Manager
    Microsoft.

  64. Congratulations!

    And good luck in your great activity!
    Keep being creative and keep inspiring all of us!

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