The New Leaf Journal set new viewership records in November. Furthermore, although I did not make all of the changes that I had planned in the October month in review post, I did make several minor site tweaks and improvements. In this month-in-review post, I will go over some of the highlights of our November content, site changes made in November, and things to look forward to in December.
Content Highlights for November
Below, I will look back at our most-read articles from November followed by a selection of other articles that you may have missed when they were first published.
Most Read Articles in November
Our most read-November article was my November 13 review of Pixelfed, a new social media platform that serves as a sort of niche and privacy-friendly alternative to Instagram. After reading the article, you can find my Pixelfed.social page for The New leaf Journal at pixelfed.social/nafnlj.
Our second most-read article from November is my piece on the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation, that of George Washington’s in 1789. In addition to offering some background, the article contains the entire text of President Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation.
The third most-read article from November was my piece on women’s fashion trends from January 1841, as reported in Graham’s Magazine, published in Philadelphia in January 1841. If you enjoy that fashionable piece, you can find a longer article that I did on autumnal women’s fashion trends from 1850.
Other Notable November Articles
On November 17, Victor provided a brief update on the development of his RPG Maker MV game design project, Jingzi Jingzi, along with a question for readers about the desirability of being able to choose your own adventure in story-focused video games. I posted a response a bit later.
On November 7, I posted on article on a car with a witch’s hat in Gowanus. This was perhaps the most humorous of my Halloween series of articles, but I had forgotten to publish it in October. Better late than never, I suppose.
On November 21, I discussed the scourge of our most virulent verbal tic today – “like.” I had thought of doing an article on the subject for a while, but overhearing the sentence “Like there was like no follow-through” led me to finally follow through.
Finally, on November 27, I published an article articulating my views on sharing photos of children on the internet. In the post, I argued that when parents and other caregivers share too much about young children, the children are deprived of the chance to learn to think and feel for themselves about what level of sharing they are comfortable with.
November Site Updates and Changes
Due to a combination of work and ensuring that we published about five articles each week, I did not make most of the changes to the site that I had planned. Some of those projects, such as a social media hub page at The New Leaf Journal, updates to the About Page, and updates to articles to include pertinent related links, will be completed either in December or January.
One change that I did make can be seen at the bottom of our articles. Previously, underneath each article, readers would find thumbnails for three articles selected by an algorithm. Due to the large number of articles that we have on site now, I expanded the “see also” selection to six articles.
Looking Forward to December 2020
For December, my focus will be primarily on publishing new content instead of making substantial changes to the site, although as I noted above, I may make some of the changes that I had planned for November but did not have time to implement. I will work with Victor to ensure that we continue to publish about five pieces of content each week. In so doing, I hope to build on our increasing number of page views and impressions from November. Instead of previewing specific content that we have planned, I will encourage everyone to visit the site periodically to catch up on our new articles.