My Year in Review for 2021

As 2021 comes to a close, it’s time for reflection.

In the past, I’ve published a few end-of-year posts where I’ve reviewed my professional work as well as personal accomplishments.

This year I’ve decided to use Problogger’s 12 great questions to ask as a guide for evaluating the year, specifically my writing.

Which means my review won’t be focusing on client websites, training, and site maintenance. I’ll save that for another future blog post.

As I evaluated my work, I discovered a change in my focus. For the past two years, I concentrated on building my business, bringing on new clients, and client training.

In 2021, my focus turned to my writing.

Writing Accomplishments for 2021

In no particular order, here are my accomplishments for the year:

1. Wrote and published 208 blog posts on this site, four posts every week published on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
2. Launched the WordPress Advent Calendar 2021, first time I’ve created an Advent calendar. Published 24 posts on WordPress.com based on already-published WordPress articles. The calendar highlights authors and posts that may not be as well-known or popular as other WordPress blogs.
3. This site has 1,490 followers: 721 on WordPress.com and 769 are email subscribers
4. According to Koko site analytics, the site had ~220,000 visitors who viewed 270,000 pages. May 2021 was the most visited month, with 27,094 visitors and 30,923 page views.
5. My top three most popular posts for 2021 were How to Disable Video Autoplay in Twitter for Desktop Browser, Android, and iOS, How to Add Alternative Text to Facebook Photos, and Affinity Ends 90-Day Free Trial and 50% Product Discount June 30, 2021. Based on the popularity of those posts, it seems website visitors are looking for tips and help for using social media and working online.
6. While comments continue to decline on my blog (as they have for most bloggers), one of the best comments and conversations I had this year on the blog was with Paul Oyler about link text wording
7. Learned the importance of standing up for my writing and work when it was criticized twice by a well-known WordPress publisher
8. Moved this site from an outdated Genesis theme to GeneratePress, a lightweight, quick-loading theme. The move to a new theme meant I reviewed over 1,200 published posts to optimize and recreate Featured Images (due to different setup in Genesis) and configure different settings. Which helped me improve my knowledge of GeneratePress, which I’ve used for clients sites for the past four years.
9. Began using the WordPress Block editor as my default editor on this site. Sadly, it doesn’t fit all my use cases (no option for inner blocks on a list item), so I continue to use the Classic Editor for my weekly roundup posts.
10. Recognized by Smashing Magazine as Person of the Week for my ongoing work to share expertise and tips on this site as well as my work organizing meetups and conferences
    

    Our Person of the Week is a front-end developer, UX professional, and meetup organizer. Please meet… Deborah Edwards-Oñoro!

    Thank you for sharing and caring, dear @redcrew!#smashingcommunity pic.twitter.com/hEyUmWiVbJ

    — Smashing Magazine (@smashingmag) June 7, 2021

11. Set up Authory to back up all my published articles on this blog, Refresh Detroit, Metro Detroit WordPress, West Metro Detroit WordPress, Torque, and Michigan UXPA. Wish I knew about Authory before Storify closed down.
12. By researching authors for the WordPress Advent Calendar, I discovered and made new connections in the WordPress community

Wrapping Up

For the first time in a long time, I felt 2021 was my year for writing.

This year returned me to what brought me to WordPress in the first place: publishing my thoughts, tips, and helpful resources.