2015 is over and 2016 has arrived. It’s a time to reflect on what’s gone before and to plan for the year ahead. In doing so, here’s a look back at GeekFluent’s year in 2015.

2015 was the year that the blog received its first-ever official sponsor. Pages views in 2015 (34,495) were down about 7% from 2014 which was the blog’s best year yet (36,900). More details stats below.

Top Ten Most-Read Posts of 2015

Here are the GeekFluent posts that got the most views in 2015. I’m only counting posts here (views of the main page would have come in 2nd).

1. (4,018) Magic Balloon: A Whiteboarding Creativity Game/Exercise, 3 April 2013
2. (1,837) Use Your Windows Laptop as an Isilon Console Terminal, 5 December 2013
3. (1,591) EMC Announces Next-Generation VMAX Storage Array, 8 July 2014
4. (1,419) What Will VAAI Do for You? Part 2 of 2: NFS, 26 March 2012
5. (1,328) EMC Announces Next-Generation VNX – Takes it Full Multicore, 4 September 2013
6. (1,293) EMC Announces RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, 26 August 2014
7. (1,084) EMC Announces Updates to BRS Line (Data Domain, Avamar, Networker), Part One, 10 July 2013
8. (931) Pure Storage Announces New Program, New Hardware, New Software Services, 1 June 2015
9. (882) EMC Enters Hyperconverged Infrastructure Market with VSPEX Blue, 3 February 2013
10. (700) EMC’s XtremIO Finally Available – Worth the Wait, 14 November 2013

Things that stand out about the list are:

• 7 of 10 are my analysis of vendor announcements, 6 of those announcements are from EMC.
• 8 out of 8 were posted before 2015
• For the first year ever, neither of my 2012 VAAI posts were in the top spot.
• #1 had 5.2 X as many views as #10

Top Ten GeekFluent Posts Written in 2015

The posts I wrote in 2015 that received the most views are:

1. (931) Pure Storage Announces New Program, New Hardware, New Software Services, 1 June 2015
2. (882) EMC Enters Hyperconverged Infrastructure Market with VSPEX Blue, 3 February 2013
3. (584) EMC Announces New High-Density Isilon Node – the HD400, 20 February 2015
4. (564) EMC Announces Plans to Make Isilon Announcements in 2016, 10 Novemeber 2015
5. (444) VMTurbo Releases Operations Manager version 5.3, 28 August 2015
6. (424) Qumulo Comes Out of Stealth Offering Data-Aware Scale-Out NAS, 16 March 2015
7. (402) SimpliVity and Lenovo Announce Hyperconverged Partnership, 24 August 2015
8. (333) PernixData Announces Version 2.5 of Their FVP Software, 25 February 2015
9. (284) NetApp to Acquire SolidFire for $870 Million – GeekFluent’s Thoughts, 22 December 2015
10. (282) SolidFire announces New Hardware node, FlashForward Guarantees, and Software-Only Offering, 26 February 2015

Things that stand out  here are:

• 10 out of 10 are my analysis of vendor announcements, 3 from EMC, 2 from (or about) SolidFire, and 1 each from Pure Storage, VMTurbo, Qumulo, Simplivity, and PernixData.
• #1 had 3.3 X as many views as #10

Referrers – Top Ten Ways Folks Found the Blog in 2015

The “referrer” is what a viewer was reading when they clicked something to get to the blog. Here are GeekFluent’s top Referrers in 2015:

1. (20,974) Search Engines
   1. (19,469) Google Search
   2. (851) Google Image Search
   3. (356) Bing
   4. (216) Yahoo Search
   5. (48) duckduckgo.com
   6. (19) ask.com
   7. (5) Google Mobile
   8. (3) wow.com
   9. (Tie – 1 each) search.comcast.net, Baidu, AOL, Yandex, sweetim.com, search-results.com, and t-online.de
2. (1,403) Twitter
3. (297) LinkedIn
4. (135) Google+
5. (97) vmwareblogs.com
6. (84) qumulo.com
7. (71) techfieldday.com
8. (54) vexperienced.co.uk
9. (Tie – 54 each) Facebook and blog.fosketts.net
10. (38) 50mu.net

Things that stand out:

• Search engines are clearly the way people most often end up on the blog.
• Google clearly dominates search
• Bing is being used more than I would have guessed
• At least one person out there is actually using AOL

Top Search Terms Used to Find the Blog

Most users have their search terms blocked, so I don’t know what terms 12,126 of the search engine referrals lead them here. But the top ones I do know are below:

1. (158) whiteboard-related, including such things as:
   1. games to play on a whiteboard
   2. dry erase board games
   3. fun games to play on a whiteboard
   4. balloon popping white board game
   5. whiteboard games for work
   6. laptop and whiteboard
2. (64) vsphere 6.0
3. (24) (nfs vaai)-related

No other terms hit two digits.

Looking Ahead to 2016

GeekFluent’s plans and goals for the new year include:

• Posting more often
• Expanding on the vendors whose announcements get covered, possibly even moving beyond just storage and virtualization
• Creating more “How To” posts
• Write the the series of “Best Practice Data Center Design and Implementation” guides that I’ve been turning around in my head for a while now.

What did I miss? If there’s content you’d like to see from me in 2016, please suggest it in the comments below.