Thanks to all the visitors to USWildflowers.com in 2018.
Three Bird Orchid – Triphora trianthophoros
Statistically, USWildflowers.com grew from 593 species at the end of 2016 to 626 at the end of 2017 – 33 new species added in 2018 compared to 33 new species added in 2017. I had targeted having 625 species for the year, and reached that in November, adding 1 more in December. Most of these new species were from my backlog; I didn’t make as many wildflower photo trips this year as in the past.
Each species on this site represents several hours (in some cases MANY hours) of work photographing, researching, writing descriptions, and publishing the photographs and updates to the database. I also continue to pursue my additional hobby of rock climbing (albeit mostly in the gym rather than on real rock,) and spent some time upgrading some code on USWildflowers.com to further ameliorate a potential SQL injection vulnerability largely addressed last year, and upgraded code to more accurately establish the SSL URLs to the site as canonical. This is part of a move to make all of the Internet more secure, as well as to reduce the possibilty that search engines will show the same content from multiple URLs, possibly lowering ranking.
The ranking concern was because USWildflowers.com saw its first year over year decrease in visits and pageviews in 2018, with pageviews down from 2.1 million in 2017, to a bit over 1.7 million in 2018. I can speculate on the decrease in pageviews: Continuing migration to mobile devices might mean rummaging through a website is not as likely to occur, although page views per visit was steady at about 2.5 pages per visit. (from 2.7 in 2016.) Since the social media focus has changed to Facebook from Twitter, perhaps more folks are satisfied with what they see on Facebook and don’t bother clicking through to the website. Additionally, MinnesotaWildflowers.info has continued to significantly increase their wildflower content with the significant funding it has received from the state of Minnesota, moving it out of the realm of “privately operated and funded” into “publicly operated and funded.”
Advertising revenue reflected the decrease in traffic in 2018, dropping even more dramatically by about 40% from 2017, significantly more than the page-view decrease. USWildflowers.com is still a self-sustaining hobby in my retirement, this year providing almost enough cash-flow to cover expenses, ending up very slightly positive after having to replace my computer monitor today (12/28). Fortunately my Nikon D7000 has continued to function flawlessly, although I think I’ve exceeded the expected life expectancy of 150,000 shutter releases.
As mentioned before, in 2017 I continued my alternate hobby – rock climbing; still mostly in the gym. I added 34 new 5.11 routes sent cleanly (in the gym,) bring my total 5.11 routes sent to match my age – 67. I went thru a long late summer- fall dry spell, so while I hope to be able to keep climbing at close to this level, I suspect I’ve peaked my ability.
Proverbs 16:9 (NKJV) – “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.”
<< climbing photos >>
I hope that you and yours will have a happy and rewarding 2018. Thanks for your ongoing use of USWildflowers.com as a resource in your effort to enjoy and identify wildflowers of the United States.