يوميات معاذ - حيث تجد #حديث_الأربعاء وقصصًا أخرى

Category: Site update (Page 18 of 23)

Blog updates and fan reactions, going for 100K views

2016-07-31 / / 0 Comments
This could be the last update I provide before reaching my 100,000 views milestone which I have been building towards for years now!
To begin my update properly, I have to thank the fans from around the world (mostly Libya) for showing me their support and standing behind me, it really makes my day even if you think it doesn’t!

Positive feedback
Just an example of positive feedback I’m getting from fans

Following up on my latest post (unplanned downtime) I began to look into second device options (still don’t know exactly what to get, any help?), and reading this article changed my views about my work flow completely, a must read if you are stuck in a third world country that’s struggling, funny thing about that post is that it relates to two of my posts, unplanned downtime and blogging from a civil war zone, so think of it as a survival guide in a country going down the tube, there is an Arabic version too if you like.

I finally finished creating my Facebook page, it took so long because I maxed out on friends and then turned my profile into a page (yes you can do that!). Despite my opinion against Facebook, I have to admit it’s my biggest visitor source, I can’t just let that go to waste without building on it, can I?
 Here is the link to the page.  

Hey! I have 5,000 friends 😀

I’ve started blogging on other sites too, lately I’ve posted on Itwadi and the feedback was rather positive, the post is in Arabic, expect to see my posts in other blogs very soon! I even started a section on my blog to collect all my guest posts in one place! It has only one post, but it’s going to change very soon god willing!


My fan feedback is very important to me, I wanted to what kind of posts you would find interesting. The poll was on the blog home page for 2 weeks, and not a single vote was casted! Luckily I put the same poll on Twitter and got some feed back I could use, the result was: 40% in favor of technical posts,
40% for Libyan affairs, and 20% for Diaries. No clear edge here, but I’ll try my best to give the fans what they want, and maybe to try on vlogging for a change.

Twitter poll results
Twitter poll results


I created a new youtube channel, I’m yet to add a proper user name to it, I need to get 100 subscribers first, subscribe please 😀  
I will post my 100,000 video on it once I make it and reach 100K, I’m still wondering whether to make an Arabic video with English subtitles or vice-versa, as it turns out Youtube doesn’t allow multiple audio sources on one video,  and I’m not open to the idea of posting two videos (when the idea was pitched my fan base was mostly English speaking, my blog caught the Libyan attention after the passport post series, and still does) uploading on video will be painful enough!

Page views number
Isn’t that a nice page view number?


 Thank you for reading this rather detailed update, please tell me what you think in the comments section below, and share the post with your people using the social media buttons 🙂

Unplanned downtime!

2016-07-25 / / 0 Comments
I wasn’t planning on staying down for a few days, but it happened anyway.
My laptop fan broke as I was cleaning the laptop from dust (who would have thought the fan blades were so soft!) and I had to look for a replacement, which proved to be a real pain!

Getting the fan

I didn’t know that the hardware / repair shops in Tripoli relied on junk laptops to provide spare parts! I thought they imported the parts in the same manner they imported laptops, but no! These people never seize to amaze me!
Repair shops buy damaged laptops to use them as spare parts, and since my laptop is such a rare limited edition laptop (not really) I had to look in over 20 stores around the capital to find a store that said maybe they can provide me with the part, I had to go home and comeback the next day.
The spare part looked much worse than the one I had running daily for the past four years!! And it was really expensive for a used one too!

Laptop fan
A laptop fan

You might wonder to yourself: Why didn’t I just get it off of Amazon or Ebay?
For a very simple reason, it would take so much effort and resources that it would lose all meaning! I’d probably rant about it in a another post some time.
The reason why the fan is so rare: It has four wires rather than the usual three like most laptops on the market have, so an extra wire cost me two days worth of downtime! Only in Libya..

I learned three things from this experience 

  1. My laptop is a “unicorn” by Libyan standards, it’s rare and shoots pixie dust out of it’s fan when it flies above the rainbow (for the amount of money I paid for this fan, it better start shooting pixie dust!) and just for the record I bought it from Tripoli, a generic entry level laptop from a common manufacturer.
    This is how repair shops view my laptop
  2. Don’t ever, and I mean EVER, attempt to clean the laptop fan by any means other than compressed air, a lesson well learned indeed, even the smallest amount of pressure can break the fan blades and render the laptop useless.

  3.  I never realized how much I relied on my laptop to do my daily tasks, which makes me think of getting a second laptop as backup, I always had a thing for Netbooks and had one for a couple of years before buying this laptop, maybe I’ll get one for the sake of portability, or I might even invest in a Raspberry Pi 3 or something as a backup system, I’ll blog about my findings when I make progress soon enough! My smartphone did a good job filling the gaps here and there, but there are some things that a smartphone can’t do, to me it’s not doesn’t qualify as a backup system.

To summaries everything said

I can’t afford such downtime at a time like this! I’m almost at my page view goal of 100,000 views which I have been hyping all year, I’d hate to miss that moment with my main device taken apart collecting dust somewhere (my desk in this case, no way I’d let my data at some random repair shop).

I hope you enjoyed this update I provided, I feel the need to stay connected with my readers as often as possible.
What about you? Let me know what you think in the comments section below! 
Do you have a good idea for a backup system? 
Share this post using your social media and help the blog grow.

90,000 page Views!

2016-06-30 / / 0 Comments
Today I noticed that I reached 90,000 page Views!!

Another significant milestone on my blog while reaching for my goal of 100,000 views which doesn’t seem too far away!  There are some changes and things I’d like to address in this site update

Blogging about Libya in Arabic

The 90,000 views post banner that I made in Gimp

Since my last milestone a few months ago I made some changes to the blog regarding content, I decided to put more focus on Libyan readers (seems only natural since I’m a Libyan living in Libya, duh!) and I have to say it’s starting to pay off! After all my top viewed post is the passport post, a pure Libyan matter.

I added a Libyan section on my blog collecting all the posts I made about Libya in Arabic and English too, I am afraid I can’t express some matters properly lately, we have some very unique problems and explaining it to foreign friends is really frustrating, people can’t imagine a country without cash flow in banks for over 6 months!

Putting more focus on Libyan readers and blogging more in Arabic doesn’t mean that I’m not blogging in English anymore or neglecting my English speaking fans! I can do both (I hope!). After all I posted this in English haven’t I?

I also started post journals, it’s an old school kind of blogging, where a blogger captures his impressions and events of his daily life and turns it into blogging, lets see how that turns out.

 I also been doing several S.E.O (search engine optimization) tweaks on my blog, I hope they come into play soon and help my blog grow.

CAPTCHA much?

I’ve taken a courageous step and decided to remove the CAPTCHA from my blog, it attracts spammers like crazy, but it’s a risk I’m willing to make, I mean Google’s CAPTCHA has become so annoying lately it drives me off stuff I want to see, so I guess it’s the same for readers wanting to comment, I’m moderating each and every comment tho, no chance!!

I got me a new logo!

I’ve been helping a friend promote his Radio show on Twitter (Checkout 96.9 FM Wednesday at 10:)) PM CET) and he thought he would reward me by designing me something, I asked him for a logo I can use on my blog, what do you think?
My blog’s new logo

Social media update

  • I’ve reached 20,000 followers on Twitter and I’ve decided to take a break of the whole “Followback” system, it requires so much energy without real reward, and don’t get me started on spam! I will continue to follow back people who follow me, but not the in same way I used to do.
    20,000 twitter followers banner
    My 20,000 Twitter follower banner, also made in Gimp


  • I’ve decided to create a Facebook page, not a personal page, a page for my blog! Who would have thought!
    While I’m known to be an anti Facebook person, I know for a fact it’s the biggest social network out there, and it’s a shame not to share my content there, it would be interesting to preach about the dangers of Facebook while being on the site! I have to admit that Facebook is my biggest traffic source. As we grow up we learn to compromise, I guess this is a price I have to pay to grow my blog.
    I’ll post a link to my blog’s Facebook page when I have it ready. 

On a lighter note, this is my 300th post after the cleanup I did a few months ago and I didn’t make a banner because this wasn’t supposed to be my 300th post!

With less that 10,000 views separating me from my blogging goal, a lot of work is due to celebrate that properly, and I’m going to need tons of fan feedback, so keep that coming folks!

As the month of Ramadan is coming to an end, I wish you enjoy a peaceful month with your friends and loved ones, and that things in Libya and all of the Arab and Muslim world improve soon.

Thank you for reading this update, please leave your comments in the comments section below, and have a nice day.

80,000 views! Site update inside

2016-05-07 / / 0 Comments
80,000 views on my blog, what a day!

I have reached 80,000 views on my blog, it’s a milestone to be celebrated indeed! The result of hard work and dedication, and I can’t forget my loyal readers!These last few weeks since I last wrote an update were a true blessing, while I blogged less, I embarked on a soul finding journey beyond the interface of blogger, I am still undecided about posting that kind of posts yet on this blog, I’ve thought of it, I might pitch a pilot post like that soon, but without feedback, none of that is happening..



Times call for a change

  • I moved from a 3rd party domain to the Blogspot hosted domain (actually I didn’t renew the subscription fee), if you feel like reading the full post, then you are welcomed to check it out from here.
  •  I’ve lost a great deal of traffic due to this sudden change, but I’m sure I’ll be able to win my readers back, after all most of them are from Libya searching franticly for a way to get a passport (pray for Libya please) and I’m sure they will comeback as soon as the reservation site gets back on-line, it’s that bad!
  • As a side effect Linkwithin is acting off, giving me two links instead of one, one for the third party domain that expired recently and the other is for the Blogspot domain.
    Since Linkwithin has a really responsive support team (just kidding), I’ve dropped the idea of using Linkwithin all together, but if you are still into it, check out this post covering a popular fix for the post issue (shameless self promotion at it’s best!!).

Blog improvements

  • During this time I decided to take a “real” look on my blog, and I found some really bad posts, I mean REALLY bad (I’m my own worst critic), so I went happy with the delete button.The total post number went down from 410 to 288, that’s in case you noticed, and in case you didn’t, there you go!
  • Deleting that huge number of posts left “dead links” all over the blog! Since I tend to link my posts together to create a better context, deleting a huge number of posts will create gaps! And there is no way to tell blogger the posts were deleted, I had to take care of those manually, one by one! With the help of a little tool of course! This tool helped me search for dead links and locate them exactly inside the blog, some of it was from the old domain but mostly it was deleted posts (and a very few links that expired ad needed to be removed).
  • I’ve figured out why some of my posts have awkward spaces in them while I didn’t do that, I might post about that, it depends on readers mainly.. 
  • Sometimes, doing nothing fixes stuff, if you wait long enough, some issues will resolve themselves (I’m talking about blogging, if you have problems work on them!). 
  • Blogger has changed the sitemap limit, only allowing 150 posts to be submitted, even with the massive downsizing I did, I was still way above the limit, luckily I found a way to add more sitemaps to fetch all my posts, which happens to be very easy to use, checkout the sitemap tool from here.
    And YES! I believe that adding a sitemap is important for blog growth, despite the claims that Google sitemaps sites automatically, I find that very hard to believe.

Brand growth

  • It’s no secret that I use Twitter for promoting my content, and I am pleased with the results, if anyone is interested I’ll make a post (or a series of posts) on how to develop a strategy to promote your blog content and twitter account side by side.
  • It’s worth mentioning that my twitter followers exceeded 16,000 followers!
  • I focus on Twitter a lot because I’m an anti-Facebook activist, so I can’t use Facebook for promotion (and everybody is on Facebook)..
  • The blog grew a great deal in comparison with the same time last year, that’s great! If I could seduce the readers to comment? That would be super too! (Come to the comments section, we have cookies).

Blog look and feel

I finally settled with a look for my blog, I like this template, and I hope you do too, because it’s going to stick around for a while!
It’s clean and responsive, so far this is the closest template to my vision of a personal blog, unless if you have a better thing to offer, I’m always down for an awesome template (in almost 4 years of blogging no one has suggested me such a thing).
I think it’s time to settle down with one look for the blog, don’t you agree?

Final words..

Change is never easy, and for some it could be harder than ever. This last month was a wild roller coaster ride of changes and challenges, and I’m glad to say I’ve concurred them all, it’s really down to how you adapt to the changes and challenges in your life and make the best of them!
Till the next major milestone.
Have a nice day, and do tell me what do you think of this post?
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