Today I received a message that this website’s software needed to be updated with a couple new versions.

Typical stuff. Software updates are supposed fix bugs, and more importantly to me, patch security vulnerabilities. So I installed the updates. As I usually do, I took a quick tour to ensure everything was working. At the bottom of the sidebar, I saw the Page View statistics.

I am not really sure what a page view is. I think it is the number of posts and pages that have been viewed by visitors.

Posts vs Pages

My website currently contains 609 posts and 273 pages. What the heck is the difference?

Posts

Most of the content here is in the form of a Post. For example, if you are reading this, you are reading a post. The Home Page of the site contains the five most recent Posts with just a snippet of the actual post. Clicking on a Post it opens up what, to me, looks like a full Page. But it is a Post.

To create a Post, I click a button, which logically to me, says, “New Post.” To me it looks like a Page. But it is a Post.

Pages

Pages have to be created by me. When I first started the website some 11+ years ago, I started each item as a Page. The I discovered the “New Post” button.

Since that early initiation, all my Posts have been, well, Posts. I create Pages as a kind of container. For example, I have a Page that lists the 3 campers we have owned. Click on one of these three links, and you land on a page with several links, such as the image below demonstrates:

Other Pages may have a photo gallery on it.

So what does all this mean? I don’t know exactly. I do know how to add content to the site. How it all actually works is a mystery.

Other Stats

I almost never poke around looking at statistics. Just adding content periodically is enough time spent. Many people spend inordinate amounts of time trying to analyze data and tweak things to increase readership. I’d rather go camping or backpacking instead.

However, the website is how I communicate with my kids. If they want to know what I am up to, they can come here. Saves wear and tear on my 5 year old iPhone.

I was surprised the Post count was 609. I thought it would be higher. But then, it comes out to around one post per week. That sounds about right.

In addition I was surprised with the number of Pages. I thought it would be a couple dozen, but it is almost 10 times as much.

The other stat that kind of blew my mind was the number of pictures I have uploaded: 9,327 images. That seems gigantic.