2008 has been a blast for me and my blog. This was the year when I stretched my limitations, creative-wise, in re-defining my blog and putting it on the blogosphere as a unique niche of catholic spirituality with a dash of human experience under the shadow of the divine. This was also the year that I conquered so many fears for change because I was trained and brought up on a very systemic and traditional background. and immediate change is not my thing. For me, change should be a gradual process and not an overnight event. But here in the blogosphere, changes can be drastic as well as instant. Haste is synonymous to change here. Yet I proved to myself that change is indeed nice especially if it benefits the greater good. But just like an over-used wheel on a dilapidated car, my blog has also experienced not only ups but also downs this 2008. This is the OTWOMD year-end report for the year 2008

SOMETHING NEW

In 2008, there were new installations and opportunities on OTWOMD

1. NEW SERIES – OTWOMD has created an additional of 21 new series in 2008 from the original 61 blog series which categorizes entries and posts into topics of special interests, for easy navigation, tagging, and user search friendly purposes. Some of these series were actually pages inside OTWOMD but because I noticed that google is taking too long for it to index and crawl on the pages, I transferred it to the posts itself and turned it into a series. After all, no one is stupid enough to waste time surfing the pages of a dynamic blog.

Media and Entertainment

• Pinoy Idolatry – About the episodes of flopped Philippine version of American Idol
• Survivor Philippines – An episode by episode account of the reality hit show
• Cocojam – an mp3 album collection
• Comedy Zone – funny and hilarious videos on youtube
• Lo and Behold – commercials, ads and interesting clips from youtube
• Mini Series – full length documentaries and films cut in parts
• Music and Lyrics – an MP3 and lyrics containing posts
• Glory – Gospel, Liturgical and Christian songs with mp3
• NBA Fever – all about NBA basketball
• Nostalgia Ochenta – Nostalgic shows, imagery, pop culture and memories from the 80’s
• Showcase – Original show episodes from the web

Catholic Spirituality

• Controversial Saints – About controversial saints and servants of God
• Incorruptibles – The mysteries of incorruptibility of the bodies of saints, mystics and seers
• Anatomy of the Soul – all about soul of the author, his inner journeys and the people around him
• A.S.K. (Alliance of Sacred Knowledge) – the Q&A portion of the blog answered and responded by 17 anonymous bloggers, priests, seminarians and nuns which volunteered for OTWOMD
• Nostri Santi – The saints and beatos of the Franciscan Capuchin Order
• Prayer Power – A collection of catholic prayers, novenas and devotions
• Thy Word – A weekly online homily-slash-reflection on the Sunday’s Gospel readings
• World Youth Day – formerly a page, which was turned into a series of posts highlighting the events of the pasts, presents and future of the world’s biggest youth gathering in history.

Advocacy

• Brother Sun, Sister Moon – A series about love, respect, preservation and protection of animals, taken from the Franciscan spirituality of love for God’s creations and the Capuchin charism of being a brother to all, even with animals.

Social Relevance

• Lupang Hinirang – A series of posts revolving around the issues which involves the Philippines, its boundaries, its tourist attractions, its sovereignity, its constitution and its democracy.
• Modern Heroes – About the unsung heroes who lived their ordinary life in extraordinary ways.
• Dreamers - Interviews and topics about people who strive to reach their dreams no matter what it takes

2. NEW ORGANIZATIONS - OTWOMD has also affiliated itself this year with new organizations. Aside from its Wordpress Pinoys affiliation, OTWOMD has also become a member of two new groups: 1) KABATAQ which stands for Kapisanan ng mga Blogistang Taga Quezon composed entirely of bloggers hailed, raised, lived and born in Quezon Province and 2) Litratong Pinoy which is a group of amateur and professional Filipino Photographers from around the globe.

3. NEW OPPORTUNITIES – OTWOMD does not involve itself with too much contests because I cannot seem to hold too much pressure and responsibility, except only for those held and facilitated by close friends in the blogosphere. You see, OTWOMD features contests here in this blog with much focus on spreading the news about the contest rather than winning the contest itself. But as always, providence happens for a a reason, and in some of these contests, I happen to win the prize. This year I won from Kotsengkuba’s Blog Almighty contest, Pinoy Ambisyoso’s Top Commentator of the month contest and Pro Gobbler dot Net’s Ipod Shuffle contest.

As if the grace was not enough, upon the draw of “Jaypee Online’s “Christmas Give away contest“, I was drawn as one of the lucky winner’s of the Grand prize. Can you believe that? I was only helping wholeheartedly Jaypee to spread the word and support him 100% in his contest but apparently the good deed has paid me back. Sabi ko sa inyo there is no harm in joining a contest. Thank you Jeypee for this contest.

RECOGNITIONS

OTWOMD has also been recognized in various fields and niche in the internet in 2008

1. RANKS – OTWOMD was lucky enough to be included in the 2008 top 100 Pinoy blogs in the Pinoy blogosphere by Ratified.Org. I have no intention in staying on the list for there are more worthy blogs out there which deserves to be included, yet it was already an honor for me for being included in the list this year.

2. REFERENCE – Because of some of my posts, Wikipedia has included my blog entries on their sources. Two of them can be found in San Lorenzo Ruiz Wiki Page for my entry “How Many Pinoys Do You Know?” and in the Survivor Philippines Wiki Page for my entry and interview with the composer of the Survivor Philippines Theme.

3. PICK-UP – Various blogs and websites has also picked up some of my entries and has included them and mentioned them on their blogs. My entry titled “What will happen to the Philippines after signing the MILF-MOA” has been mentioned by MLQ3 in his Inquirer.net Blog and Club1ph article. My “China-Spratlys” post was also picked up by Mong Palatino in Global Voices.com. And my Blog Coverage for the 2008 World Youth Day in Sydney has been referred by the Capuchin owned website of Fr. Martin OFM Cap in his blog in the Most Holy Redeemer Parish site. CatholicChurch.org has also mentioned OTWOMD in their website as one of the sources for the WYD 2008 events. Vocation.Com meanwhile asked permission from me to post some of my photos of the WYD

OTWOMD STATS

1. GENERAL STATISTICS – From the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm),, these are the internal statistics of OTWOMD based on WP-Useronline, WP-General Stats, Google Analytics, E-referrer and StatCounter.

• Most number of Users Online for a 6 seconds duration was 99 on July 22, 2008 during OTWOMD’s World Youth Day Blog Coverage
• Total Number of Posts is 800. (537 Regular Posts and 263 Ka Pepe Posts). Technically I’m considering the Regular posts count of 537 without the 263 Ka Pepe posts.
• Total Number Comments in all posts excluding spams, invalid comments, trackbacks and pingbacks is 5,529
• Total Number of Pages existing deep inside the bowels of OTWOMD is 51
• Total Number of Keywords (tags) used for all posts is 992
• Total Number of OTWOMD Series (categories) featured in OTWOMD is 82, including series that has not yet been launched
• Total Number of Links in the Blogroll is 143
• Total Number of Words in Posts is 894,110 including Regular and Ka Pepe posts
• Total Number of Words in Pages is 61,736
• Total Number of Words in Comments is 331,818 excluding Trackbacks and Pingbacks
• Total Number of Unique Hits is 169.524 (as of Dec 31, 2008 – 8:59 am)
• Total Number of Absolute Unique Visitors (Visitors who clicked OTWOMD for the first time) is 146,476 (compared to 23,048 Unique Visitors last 2007).
• Total Number of Returning Visitors (those who comeback to OTWOMD) is 13,664
• Total Average Time Spent Reading OTWOMD is 33 minutes and 38 seconds for all visitors. Some visitors even stay for as long as 5 hours per day.
• Total Number of Referring Websites, Blogs and Search Engines is 614
• Total Number of Unique Hits From Referrers is 80,918
• Total Number of Direct Unique Hits (number of people who type “bluepanjeet.net” directly on their browser’s address bar).

2. VIEW FROM THE TOP – As of December 31, 2008 – 10:00 pm, these are the top and popular stats of OTWOMD based on Popularity Contest Plugin, Most Commented Posts Plugin, Wordpress Statistics and Google Analytics

Most Popular Posts in 2008 as of December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm),calculated with an algorythm based on comment count, pageloads, clicks, links, trackbacks and pingbacks:

1. Celebrity Pinay Sex Scandal Video Tape Of Nude Filipina Girls And Women: Mga Hubo’t Hubad Na Babae
2. The Immaculate Conception of Tracy Isabel Borres?
3. 12 women i’m going to date this Christmas
4. My Christmas Message and the Nativity Story (Full Movie)
5. Joyful! Joyful!
6. Desktop Free View
7. Somewhere In My Memory
8. OTWOMD is now powered by Wordpress 2.7: another learning experience
9. My Christmas gifts to Utoy, Dfish and IFM
10. Parishes in Manila are encouraged for a “livelier” Simbang Gabi

Most Commented Post from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of valid Comments made by users and visitors

1. Too Hundredth – 102 comments (*New Breaker. Published in 2008)
2. Some people are just not that hungry for awards – 94 comments (*New Breaker. Published in 2008)
3. Somewhere In My Memory – 92 comments (*Number 1 Last year. Published in 2007)
4. If you were in my shoes, would you do the same to a USER-FRIENDLY? – 79 comments (*New Breaker. Published in 2008)
5. The early death of Pinoy Idol – 78 comments (*New Breaker. Published in 2008)
6. Lab Team – 75 comments (*Number 2 Last year. Published in 2007)
7. Desktop Free View – 71 comments (*Number 4 Last year. Published in 2007)
8. The Hundredth – 69 comments (*Number 3 Last year. Published in 2007)
9. My Ronito and Ronita – 63 comments (*Number 5 Last year. Published in 2007)
10. PRC forms for renewal of PRC ID License for all OFW and Migrant Filipino professionals abroad – 63 comments (*New Breaker. Published in 2008)

Top Search Engine Referrers from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Blog Wordpress Statistics

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Dogpile.com
4. Blog catalog
5. AOL
6. Friendster
7. Webcrawler.com
8. Wikipedia
9. MSN
10. ASK.com

Top Blog Referrers from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics

1. Reyna Elena Dot Com
2. How Brother Utoy Failed Salvation History
3. Litratong Pinoy
4. Eto Ang Sayo
5. Skippy Heart Dot Com
6. Chronicles of Kotsengkuba
7. Brian Gorell: The Not So Talented DJ Montano
8. Chuvaness: Nosebleed at its finest
9. Bloggity Blogs (now Chocolateword.net)
10. 100% Batangueño

Most Read Post from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of hits and average time spent on each posts from Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics. This contradicts the common belief that most commented posts are the most read because majority of readers don’t leave comments.

1. PRC forms for renewal of PRC ID License for all OFW and Migrant Filipino professionals abroad
2. Slicing Mindanao for the GRP-MILF Memorandum of Agreement
3. The Prostitute Nuns of St. Francis
4. Survivor Philippines Unleashed
5. The Horrible Whale and Dolphin Massacre Tradition of Faroe Islands in Denmark
6. World Youth Day (all posts combined)
7. The Powerful Voice of Arnel Pineda
8. Stella Maris of Bukas Palad Lyriucs and MP3
9. The Dance that Launched Half-a-Billion Prayers into Heaven
10. The early death of Pinoy Idol

3. TRAFFIC - From the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), these are the demographics for the traffic of OTWOMD

Most Used Keywords from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of hits from search engines gathered by Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics.

1. fear factor philippines
2. arnel pineda
3. tracy isabel borres
4. bluepanjeet
5. survivor philippines
6. stella maris lyrics
7. charice pempengco
8. faroe islands dolphin massacre
9. famous filipino movie lines
10. memorandum of agreement in mindanao

Top Countries which Generates Traffic from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of hits from search engines gathered by Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics.

1. Philippines
2. United States
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. United Kingdom
6. United arab emirates
7. Saudi Arabia
8. Singapore
9. India
10. Japan

Top Languages which Generates Traffic from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of hits from search engines gathered by Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics. See, it pays to write in different languages.

1. English – us
2. English – general
3. English – uk
4. Deustch
5. French
6. Japanese
7. Italian
8. Spanish
9. Korean
10. Chinese-mandarin

4. TECHNICAL – From the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), these are the demographics for the technical side used by visitors in visiting OTWOMD

Top Browsers Used by Visitors in Reading OTWOMD from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of hits from search engines gathered by Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics. I really need to double my efforts in campaigning against the use of Internet Explorer haha.

1. Internet Explorer
2. Firefox
3. Safari
4. Opera
5. Chrome
6. Mozilla
7. Netscape
8. Playstation 3
9. Mozilla Compatible Agent
10. SeaMonkey

Top Operating Systems Used by Visitors in Reading OTWOMD from the period of January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 (10:00 pm), based on the number of hits from search engines gathered by Google Analytics, Stat Counter and Wordpress Blog Statistics.

1. Windows
2. Macintosh
3. (not set)
4. Linux
5. iPhone
6. SymbianOS
7. iPod
8. Danger Hiptop
9. Playstation 3
10. SunOS

DOWNSIDES

OTWOMD has also experienced downsides. Hindi araw araw ay pasko.

1. WEBHOST DILEMMA – My old server has unwittingly blocked me from accessing my own blog and my control panel in their server which caused a lot of trouble for me and especially to my readers. It’s a long story, I’ll write it on a separate entry.

2. CHRISTMAS TREE BLOG PARADE – I neglected the promotion of my “Christmas tree blog Parade Project” because I focused recently in moving my blog to a new server which took me over two weeks to finish from December 16, 2007 to January 1, 2009. Because of this kakaunti ang sumali at hindi ko na pati namonitor yung mga iba entries. Hahanapin ko pa sila via google blog search kainis.

3. TECHNORATI AUTHORITY DOWN – my former 367 blog authority last year decreased to a 109 (as of Dec 31, 2008) because of the new 6 month expiration rule implemented by the people at Technorati. There is really nothing much I can do but write quality contents so that others can pick up what I have written. Link farming and meme tagging can help but it will leave a more lasting damage once Google penalizes you for inadvertent blog linking.

3. GOOGLE PAGE RANK DOWN – At the stroke of 8:00 am on January 1, 2008, my Google Page Rank decreased from its all time high of 4/10 to 3/10. I was a bit depressed since I really tried my very best to maintain the rank. But as what most of SEO experts says, Google PR plummets because of various factors on the blog. My hunch is fivefold:

• It maybe caused by my recent update of my XML sitemap which was crawled by google on the eve of New Year while I was tweaking my blog. Included in the crawl was my new blogroll which for 40 years has not been read by Google. The Google bots must have thought that OTWOMD is a link farm

• It maybe caused by my two projects: “The Christmas Tree Blog Parade” and the “2010 Prayer Brigade for Elections” which includes a link back to my site for tracing and documentation purposes and not for link farming. Google Penalizes link farms. Next year I will just let the participants leave a comment on the Project entry instead of linking back to avoid such penalty tsk tsk.

• It maybe cause by my Ka Pepe: Likely but not Possible kasi lahat ng link ko ay no-follow at wala ako badge ng mga kung ano ano. Isa pa, naka etsa=pwera sa robot.text ko ang mga kateegorya na pang ka pepe kaya hindi nila ito nakikita.

• It maybe caused by the quality of my posts which I wrote. Google bases the PR on relevancy and importance of posts in search engines. So sino nga ba naman ang mag-google ng mga entries ko na personal at emo tulad ng “my 12 dates this christmas” diba? haha. Kaya this year I will try my best to avoid irrelevant postings.

• May inggit na nagsumbong sa akin, haha. This is the most plausible and probable cause I can think of, Promise. Hindi nagkakamali ang kutob ko lalo na sa mga kaaway haha

With my PR down to 3/10, it only means one thing: My blog’s search ability and visibility on the search engine results will also decrease is. Decrease exposure on search results, means decrease traffic. Decrease traffic means decrease Ka Pepe. Pano na ang hinuhulugan ko na bahat at lupa? haha

Kahapon malungkot ako at depressed, pero ngayon masaya na ako because for two years, God has provided me with everything I need to make this blog successfull. And alam ko, through thick and thin andyan pa rin ang aking Panginoon sa tabi ko. Promise. There are so many untold miracles in this blog that you would believe that it is really guided by a higher power, powerful than Gurgle itself.

CHANGES

There would be significant changes in OTWOMD this year to better its service to all of you:

• Menu Bar – Some of the menus on the menu bar (navigation just below the header) were removed and would be transferred to the sidebar soon to give way to my other blog links. I’ll write all about it on a separate entry.

• Some of the Series (including all of its entries) here on OTWOMD would be transferred to my other blogs. Again, I will write a separate entry about it.

• OTWOMD will focus more on topics about God, Biblical Reflections, Catholic spirituality, catechism and dogmas, media , psycho-spiritual, life, dreams, vocations, extraordinary lives and triumphs of people, experiences and everything positive about human existence.

• All Music (audio) on posts and pages here at OTWOMD will be automatically turned off (with the exemption of this entry) giving the readers the choice to turn them on if they want to listen to it to give way to my sidebar mp3 player which will play a 15 second excerpt of the OTWOMD theme song everytime the page loads. Its less annoying diba? and will somehow remind the readers “subliminally” that they are in OTWOMD. Everytime they hear the song, they will only think of one thing: On The Wings Of My Dream Blog” hehe.

• Some of the large loading headings, banners and reminders on the sidebar, posts and pages are deleted which causes extreme amount of time to load. I will just maintain the necessary. Simplicity is beauty.

• Some of the pages will be deleted and integrated para walang clutter sa page section and para google friendly sila hehe.

• My Photo Gallery called “HUES” and posts containing large amounts of Photos will be transfered to my official Photo Blog. At least 3 photos will be featured on a post when the entry is photo-oriented in natuyre, but the complete pictures will be on my photo blog. This is to lessen the page load time that readers experience when accessing OTWOMD.

• I changed my header to better represent the title of my blog. In my former header, it creates an illusion that St. Peter’s Basilica is situated on a high ground and the picture of me in it is standing on the rock. This time, I designed a header which literally represents the title by adding wings on me, clouds and rays of light to create an image that i’m flying in the clouds (or to say the least, sitting on the clouds).

• The signature has been changed to give it a more formal look, a better description of the author and give focus on the ending salutation rather than the design itself.

• My Blogroll on the BLINK Page is updated and categorized according to Caste system haha. Joke lang. The Blink Page will temporarily stay there in the menu bar until the need to transfer it to the sidebar comes.

• Permalinks of all posts and pages are changed with the inclusion of date and year of publishing for better tracing, determination and documentation. Words in the permalinks (URL or Web Address) will also be shortened to become search engine friendly and for ease of linking by other bloggers. If you have linked posts to OTWOMD using the old permalink, it will still be valid when clicked because of the presence of the Post ID present on the permalink. Its an important element on a permalink. So if you are changing the permalink structure of your blog, always include the “post id” to retain its validity or else it would return a 404 error (no post found) message when users and bloggers clicked the old permalink that you used. Look at the example below:

OLD PERMALINK (URL):

http://bluepanjeet.net/2008/12/07/1634/black-saturday-is-for-catholics-black-friday-is-for-shoppers-and-cyber-monday-is-for-cyborgs/

NEW PERMALINK (URL):

http://bluepanjeet.net/2008/12/07/1634/black-friday/

OTWOMD BLOG GOALS FOR 2009

I set some goals to achieve this year of 2009 and I will evaluate their effectiveness on next year’s OTWOMD year end report. These are my goals this year for OTWOMD:

• Increase the Google Page Rank
• Render OTWOMD search engine friendly
• Increase traffic from the average of 700-800 unique hits per day to 1000 hits per day.
• Diminish or eradicate tags, meme and link baiting
• Write more original and unique quality contents
• Write in other languages that I know a little bit of, like Italian, Latin, Portuguese and Spanish
• Increase the readers coming from the USA
• Develop relationship with foreign bloggers
• Expose OTWOMD on Catholic Oriented blogs and websites
  
• Read and learn more about wordpress codex and html/php coding
• Learn Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere and Macromedia Flash Softwares
• Expand OTWOMD | Bluepanjeet.Net into three independent blogs (i’ll write a separate entry about it).

The Vatican, on December 18, 2008 made a statement saying,

“Today the Internet calls for a growing integration of written, audio and visual communications and therefore challenges the media at the service of the Holy See to enlarge and intensify their collaboration”.

Even before they said this, OTWOMD has already been a part and parcel of the Catholic Church’s efforts in reaching to the people via internet to evangelize and proclaim that there is really a God. OTWOMD is on the right track after all when TAPSILOG (Transcribed Audio-visual Psycho-Spiritual Integration Log) was created for the purpose of using images, sounds and the written word, all rolled into one post for the Glory of God.

OTWOMD continues to serve the Catholic Church in Spreading the Word of Christ and will continue to serve its readers from all nations, religions, nationality, orientation and all walks of life, whether through its Rise and Fall On The Wings Of My Dream.