At year’s end it’s always interesting to look back and see which articles got the most visits. Here are the top-five QuakerRanter.org blog posts of 2013.

1. Outreach gets people to your meetinghouse / Hospitality keeps people returning

This grew out of a interesting little tweet about search engine optimization that got me thinking about how Friends Meetings can retain the curious one-time visitors.

2. Tom Heiland

My father-in-law died in January. These are few pictures I put together while Julie was still at the family home with the close relatives. Thanks to our friends for sharing a bit of our life by reading this one. He’s missed.

3. Expanding Concepts of Pacifism

A look at Friends testimonies and the difficulties of being a fair-trade pacifist in our hyper-connected world today. I think George Fox and the early Friends were faced with similar challenges and that our guide can be the same as theirs.

4. Rethinking Blogs

A number of new services are trying to update the culture of blogging. This post looked at comments; a subsequent one considered how we might reorganize our blogs into more of a structured Wiki.

5. Iraq Ten Years Later: Some of Us Weren’t Wrong

This year saw a lot of hang wringing by mainstream journalists on the anniversary of the Iraq War. I didn’t have much patience and looked at how dissenting voices were regularly locked out of debate ten years ago–and are still locked out with the talk that “all of us” were wrong then.

I should give the caveat that these are the top-five most-read articles that were written this year. Many of the classics still outperform these. The most read continues to be my post on unpopular baby names (just today I overheard an expectant mother approvingly going through a list of over-trendy names; I wondered if I should send her the link). My post on how to order men’s plain clothing from Gohn’s Brothers continues to be popular, as does a report about a trip to a legendary water hole deep in the South Jersey pines.

Metropolis is a “news, analysis and commentary” site from veteran Philadelphia reporter Tom Ferrick (Wikipedia). An alum of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tom’s spent the last half-dozen years talking to everyone who will listen about the future of print and Philly news. He’s done talking and is showing what can be done on a budget budget. From “This is Metropolis,” the lead article:

Local newspapers, TV and radio stations are retreating from in-depth coverage of regional news either due to economic or audience considerations.

The retreat has been gradual, but no one expects it to stop. The company that owns the region’s largest newspapers — the Inquirer and Daily News — is in bankruptcy. The size of the editorial staffs at the papers continues to shrink. The prognosis for metro dailies here and elsewhere is not good. The journalism practiced by these papers is still robust, but the economic model that has sustained it is eroding. If these traditional sources of news falter or fail what will take their place?

The site was built in Movable Type. The most prominent feature is the slideshow display of featured articles. Tom has seen a similar effect on another journalism site and a search found the “Sliding Horizontal Banner Rotator” at Active Den, a great site to purchase pre-built Flash files. Movable Type entries are outfitted with custom fields to enter images and links. Movable Type then creates a custom XML file for the “Main Stories” feed, which is then picked up and displayed by the Flash banner. In addition, the site uses Google Adsense to provide income.

Visit: Philadelphia Metropolis

Client Testimonial:

“The list allowed me to click only three attributes, but for Martin I wanted to check them all. He is a wonderful, personable, creative person who also happens to be unflappable. I highly recommend his for web design.“
March 30, 2010

Tom Ferrick, Journalist/Publisher
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2009
Top Qualities: Great Results, Personable, Good Value.