I've been publishing to this domain since 1999 in some fashion. I've been blogging since August of 2004. I rolled over to Drupal in November of 2006 at which point I started tracking stats. Traffic has had its ups and downs but basically has been increasing. Moving to Drupal improved my SEO rankings quite nicely.

This past month has been a bit of a bonanza of traffic on this little site of mine. First of all, Drupalcon Paris occurred. I was lucky enough to be there and I took quite a bit of video. Those videos were available within a day or two of the session itself. September 7-9th proved to be some of the heaviest traffic I've ever enjoyed. Part of that had to do with posting four sets of videos. I must admit to a tiny bit of embarrassment--the videos were pretty shaky as I hadn't packed a tripod. Some videos weren't complete due to battery failures. But, by in large, folks seemed pretty happy they were being popped up on line quickly. This had come off of a nice series of videos at Drupalcamp Colorado that I had posted in June and July.

It seemed, yesterday, pretty certain that I was going to nudge out the best traffic the site had ever achieved in a single month - and that is exactly what happened. With a couple of days left in September, the content posted this month was compelling enough to drive traffic.

The trick to increasing traffic really isn't rocket science. It really comes down to:

• patience
• good SEO practices (Drupal does this nearly out of the box)
• compelling content (I hope that my content is interesting - although there is the occasional vanity post about friends, family, food, or travel)

I am pretty happy with the trending and was pleased this morning with my results.

Then some Dumb Luck occurred. Suddenly Woopra bumped from 2 folks on line to 8. Then it was 10. Then I saw it jump to 18. Suddenly it was up at 23--sustained. A riot of visitors were showing up on the site. Every one of the folks popping on the site was going to an old blog post about umbrellas in Vancouver. About a week ago I added the Tweetmeme module to my site and it revealed two tweets.

The first was from @felixcartal:

@anniemacdj that's why we have this at our airport: http://bit.ly/DORO6

and the second was from @anniemacdj:

RT wow we need these in ireland @felixcartal @anniemacdj that's why we have this at our airport: http://bit.ly/DORO6

From Wikipedia:

Annie Mac (born in Dundrum, Dublin, Ireland as Annie MacManus on 18 July 1978[1]) is a DJ and television presenter who hosts an eponymous electronic dance music show on BBC Radio 1 in the United Kingdom which airs at 7:00 pm on Friday evenings. She DJs in the UK but presents shows such as Other Voices in Ireland.

She currently has 37,370 followers. It seems a tiny percentage saw her somewhat cryptic post about needing something in airports and were willing to click. A very old post caught someone's interest which caught some one else's interest.

Will this traffic be sustainable? No. Was I happy to see it come across the transom? Of course! Still, it seems that getting hit with a tweet from someone with a large following certainly can't hurt.

Thanks @anniemac and @felixcartal - I appreciate the shout out!