I have been waiting for a day when I haven’ t got a post to publish. Why? To update readers about the Almanac of the Past. And with a bit of manoeuvring today is the day.
What is the News from the Almanac of the Past?
The plan is to have a post for each day. I am virtually there for November to March, but a way away for the warmer months.
In the winter months, I have been revising, improving, developing and adding content to previously published pages. For those of you who have been here a while, you will have been receiving posts you have seen before. Next year, you might be seeing some for the third time. I’m not sure what to do about this except improve posts and add content. But I am considering stopping automatically posting repeated posts to subscribers. Maybe from next November? Feed back would be good – please email me at kpflude at chr . org . uk (I’ve slightly scrambled the email to stop the robots).
What is the planned content for the Almanac of the Past?
The nature of an almanac is to be a pot-pourri. They are about seasons, time, folklore, history, important events, and anniversaries. I also like to cover history, famous people and discoveries. Gods, Goddesses, Saints, sinners, and archaeology. What I want it to be is something that makes us more mindful about the passing of the year. How seasons and time change the way people see their world. My focus is mostly on the UK, but also on Rome and Greece. With occasional excursions to other places. I am trying to find more content that is London-based, but not to the exclusion of everything else. I also have an ambition to add more important news of discoveries that change our view of the past. If I get the formula right, I will attempt to get a publication from it, otherwise it will remain online.
Developments for the Almanac
It takes quite a lot of time for me to keep it up. You will see, from the graph above, that the readership is yearly making progress. Particularly, last year. But then it’s a steady progress from a small base, rather than Kardashian viral.
This is, at least, partially because I would rather not spend my time marketing. I want to be writing. But, I have decided I need to spend a little more time marketing the site. When I ran the Old Operating Theatre Museum, I had the skills to get our web site to first place on google searches. But this was in the pioneering days of the World Wide Web. Now, it’s more difficult, but I am taking a ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) course. I have also loaded some ‘plugins’ to WordPress which help with SEO. I thought you might be interested in some of the consequences.
The plugins ‘parse’ the site and give recommendations for improvements. This should, get the site further up the Google landing page. I have no doubt that it involves or will involve AI. The ‘Yoast’ plugin I am using as I type this, tells me words like ‘however’ are a ‘complex’ word and so they down grade my ‘readability’ quotient. It also tells me that that last sentence was too long. So, it wants simple sentences, and words that join sentences together. And not too many sentences in a paragraph and a proper scattering of headings.
It also assesses the SEOness of the text. So I have to tell it what the main subject of the page is. And it wants that word or phrase in:
the title:
the first paragraph
the image
the meta description tag
and scattered, but not too densely (because Google will punish the site for playing the algorithm) through the text.
Hence, you will see the phrase ‘News from the Almanac’ scattered more than I would normally like through this text. Of course, I know no one really will be searching for ‘News from the Almanac. So I should change the SEO phrase just to Almanac. But, then I’m not really interested in attracting non-readers to this page. I see this as between me and my email subscribers!
After writing that paragraph I realised that I would want people to land up here if they typed in ‘Almanac of the Past’. So you will see, I’ve editing the text scattering that phrase here and thereabouts.
In effect, I am being trained by a slightly stupid tutor who has no particular understanding of the needs of a writer of history! And you can’t answer back, you just get downgraded!
And it seems to be working as my numbers are getting better more quickly.
Any problems for the Almanac of the Past?
Obviously, my terrible proofreading is a concern! Maybe that’s one-way republishing helps. A year later, it’s easier to see the typos, the ugly writing, and issues with the content.
But there is another issue with the emails, which I have been trying to solve for about 6 months. The links in the emailed posts don’t work. But they do work if you visit the almanac on the web. This is nuts as I always use the full URL. For example: https://www.chr.org.uk/anddidthosefeet/december-29th-st-thomas-wassailing/.
So, this is very much a technical issue, one might say a bug in the system. I think it stems from the fact that my blog was stored not in https:/public_html/ but in https://public_html/anddidthosefeet. This seemed a logical choice at the time, as the blog shared space with other things. I haven’t managed to convince the tech guys at either the internet provider or WordPress that this is a bug. So, the alternative is to move the blog. But I am reluctant to do this in case it completely messes everything up.
Change the content of the newsletter, you might think. But I can find nothing that allows me to alter or add anything to the email version of the post. As I write this, I think I will temporarily add a line at the bottom of the post which says:
if the links are not working, copy and paste this URL https://www.chr.org.uk/anddidthosefeet/whateverkevinsalmanacpageiscalled
to your browser. This, will get you to the Almanac of the Past on the web where all the links will work.
And this will allow you to easily copy or link to the webpage and send the Almanac of the Past to your friends and followers. (I’m hoping you are Taylor Swift). You willalso be able to comment easily and maybe even like the post?
Another advantage of visiting the web version is that you get a better version to read. This is because I often find howling typos when I read the emailed post. I correct them, with a red embarrassed face.
If you are reading this on the web, then all the above must have been very annoying to read! Maybe I will move it down to the bottom of the post! (which I did).
Trying new things on the Blog
Do you want to make a comment?
First Written and Published on 22nd January 2025
Mulled WIne and Blue Monday Posts
In order to clear January 22nd I moved the previous January 22nd post to December 10th. As its all about Mulled Wine, Glugg, and Gluwein., its better at the beginning of the Christmas Season than in late January.
To see it click here: or cut and past this url https://www.chr.org.uk/anddidthosefeet/january-22-22-time-to-mull-it-over/
I also didn't tell you Monday was Blue Monday because I had already sent you one post on the 20th. So this is the Blue Monday Post. https://www.chr.org.uk/anddidthosefeet/january-13th-18th-blue-monday-wolf-moon-start-of-lambing-and-twelfth-night-old-style/
If the links are not working on the email version of this post then:
copy and paste this URL https://www.chr.org.uk/anddidthosefeet/news-from-the-almanac-of-the-past-january-22nd/
To your browser. This, will get you to the Almanac of the Past on the web where all the links will work. (I hope).
First Written and Published on 22nd January 2025
Please leave me a comment – its great to hear what you think.