Posted by Site Stats
2015 was again a record year for db2commerce.com. This year saw over 380,000 page views, which is more than 100,000 more than last year! I expect next year to not be such a drastic increase because my traffic has been fairly even through this year instead of the rapid series of upward steps I’ve seen in previous years. Despite the drastic increase in views, this was the first year I didn’t double the page views from the previous year. By contrast, in 2012 – the first year when I published an average of at least one post a week, I saw 65,000 page views the whole year. I do believe I may be saturating the DB2 audience.
In the life of db2commerce.com, I’ve had over 820,000 page views, which means I should pass a million in 2016!
I still get about half my traffic from the US while about half comes from other countries. India, Germany, and Canada are the top foreign countries I see page views from.
This year, I published about 63 posts, an average of more than one per week. I personally wrote 52 of those for a total of more than 62,000 words. Guest bloggers added another 17,513 words. I had SEVEN different guest bloggers this year, which beats my previous high of two. A big thanks to all of my guest bloggers:
- Ian Bjorhovde – 3 posts
- Abhik Roy – 3 posts
- Pavan Kristipati – 2 posts
- Jim Reutener – 1 post
- Luke Numrych – 1 post
- Mike Krafick – 1 post
Though I had more guest bloggers this year, I had fewer posts than in past years – last year, I had 14 guest blogger posts from my two guest bloggers.
Since I started the blog, I’ve written more than 420,000 words.
My best day this year was March 3, when I had 1,813 page views in one day!
Ember’s Year
The highlight of my professional year this year was presenting at the DB2 Symposium in Veldhoven, Netherlands. It was the first time I have been paid to speak, and the trip I took to explore Cologne and surrounding area afterwards was awesome.
I also spoke at IDUG in Philadelphia in May, and at Midwest Users groups in Milwaukee and St. Louis in March. I attended IBM Insight in November. I presented on the DB2 Night Show on October 16th.
At the end of 2014, I switched employers, moving from a consulting firm focused on WebSphere Commerce to a consulting firm focused on database consulting (XTIVIA). The move was absolutely the right choice for me. While I still miss some of the people I worked with before, I’ve had such exposure to different environments that it has been just awesome for me.
This year alone, I’ve had the opportunity to work on Native Encryption and two different production BLU databases. I’ve worked with DB2 running on a Pure Application server. I’ve done extensive performance tuning and upgrade work with DB2 on Windows. In fact, I’ve worked with DB2 on RH Linux, AIX, Windows, and HP-UX all in one year. I’ve done fixpacks or upgrades on most of those platforms. I’ve learned Power Shell. I’ve written more SQL (mostly on MON_GET table functions) than ever before, and have continued to build my skills in architecting and implementing various high availability and disaster recovery options for DB2. I’ve done health checks for at least 4 production WebSphere Commerce databases. I’ve spoken to a number of companies about their plans and ideas and steered them in the right direction and helped them ask the right questions.
More than ever, I’m sure that an expert does not know everything about a topic. They know what questions to ask and how to find the answers to those questions through experimentation, testing, reading, researching, or reaching out to others. In the spirit of Douglas Adams, it is not about the answers, it is about the questions.
Next Year
I plan to spend more time on BLU performance next year. As has been my hope for several years now, I still hope to find a client that will let me get my hands on pureScale. I also get to speak again at the DB2 Symposium in The Netherlands again in April!
Several IBMers hinted on the DB2 Night show Eggnog Party on December 18th that a new version or release of DB2
- may
be coming next year – I’m looking forward to playing with that!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all of my readers! I hope this year was as great for you as it was for me, and may your new year be even better!
Hi Ember
Keep up the awesome work! Your blogs, as always, brings fresh perspectives on DB2. It was such a privilege for me to get an opportunity to post content on db2commerce.
Cheers
Abhik