What Device Do You View This Site On?

Some time in the next few months, I will be moving this site from Automattic’s servers to another host which accepts that a website is a website, which customers (not the service provider) own and edit. It seems like the thing to do is first to move to self-hosting WordPress, then consider moving to a simpler, stabler solution such as a static site generator.

I have some idea of trends in traffic and which sites and social media refer people to which pages, but I don’t know what kinds of device people use to view my site. Conventional wisdom is that everyone uses smartphones for browsing, but obviously that depends on who and for what: Instagram probably gets a higher proportion of small-device visits than say Encyclopedia Iranica. I know plenty of people who never got a smartphone, and Darrell Markewitz found data that only 33% of all web traffic in Canada, and only 18% of traffic to his blog, comes from mobile OSes. A lot of talk about technology trends is not really description but magic: the speakers seek to create a new reality with powerful words. So I would really appreciate it if you could fill out the following poll.

[polldaddy poll=10315508]

Edit 2019-06-06: After a week, 7 votes for laptops or external monitors, 2 votes for smartphones and other small screens, 0 votes for tablets or something unusual.

If I move away from the WordPress software entirely, it might be easier to remove comments from future posts. (I will definitely remove them from the ‘site’ part of this webpage, a list of my articles does not need a comments field but WordPress puts one on every page unless you install a plugin! So yes, to remove a few lines of code from the generator you have to add a separate ‘plugin’ to WordPress! It is sad to watch the comment section of dead friends’ blogs fill up with spam advertising quack pills and fake handbags because nobody can figure out how to disable comments).

What kind of dynamic features of this site such as the RSS feed or pingbacks and trackbacks to linked sites do you actually use? Do you have any other special needs which I should keep in mind? Feel free to comment here or by email.

Maintaining a website is work! Support this site with a donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay

Edit 2022-06-27: converted to block editor. The poll is missing!