Seasonal Hubs are Fun

The perfect hub would attract lots of visitors every day of the year, but some topics are just not like that. A seasonal hub is one that is tied to a particular time of year. It will lie dormant for eleven months, gathering virtual moss, only to waken up all by itself when its time comes around again. Seasonal hubs are fun. Most hubs, most of mine at least, are statistically boring.They just sit there, day after day, attracting their normal number of views, be it one, ten or a hundred, give or take minor fluctuations. But the seasonal ones look far prettier on the stats page:

This one, The Holy Month of Ramadan - an introduction for non-Muslims, is typical. Nothing all year, then a quick, sharp climb to a peak, then down the other side for a well earned slumber. Will this year's peak exceed last year's? Who knows. It's simply fun to watch what happens. Will this mildly (OK blatantly) promotional meta-hub increase its chances of passing last year's peak? Quite possibly. Is that cheating? Yes but it's my bat and my ball...

The extremely sharp eyed among you might have spotted that the peaks are slightly less than a year apart. That's because the Islamic year is twelve lunar months, or 355 days. Ramadan advances by ten days per solar year. Your Christmas hubs will stay firmly centered on December twenty-fifth!

It is worth noting that seasonal hubs needn't just be about festivals and holidays. Annual events like the opening of the football season, or the BBC Promenade Concerts, or the Edinburgh Festival will perform the same way. But these ones take a little more maintenance. You'll need to dust them down in time for the main event, updating such specific information as dates, venues, etc. It's still easier than writing a new hub and well worth the effort. A little bit of fresh information near the top shows readers that the material is up to date.

I'm not here for the money...

though that might change when I stop the day job. My main reason for writing here is to attract readers who enjoy my output. Tucked away in the Hub Metrics tab is my favourite performance indicator of all: View Duration. Revenue Potential doesn't interest me at all. But in this high speed on-line World, isn't it humbling to know that people are willing to set aside enough time in their day to read an article from beginning to end? Whether they comment or not, the readers who contribute to a four or five star View Duration rating are my reason for carrying on writing.

And finally - any fifty-plus year-old telecommunications engineers out there might have noticed the similarity between the seasonal views graph (above) and the waveform of the rectified squegging oscillator of a super-regenerative wireless receiver operating in linear mode. Sad old codgers, aren't we?

Thanks for reading!