A few months ago I added a widget to this website that lets anyone quickly and anonymously message me. I had very little idea how that would actually go at the time, but since then it’s become my favorite feature I’ve added here.

I’ve pretty much always had some contact info posted here and get occasional messages through email and such. But the message widget is just sitting there and takes seconds to use. I’ve already gotten way more messages through it then I’ve ever gotten through all my other contact methods.

It’s not overwhelming or annoying though. After the first week, the number of messages coming in settled down to about a handful every week or two. A lot of messages are just some variant of “hi” or something funny (which I do love and fully expected going in), but still a lot of others are comments about something I wrote which are always nice to read.

Even with the short or joke messages, the message I get includes a link to the page you were on when you sent it. That’s useful so people don’t have to include context about what they’re commenting on but it also gives me a little bit of insight into what people are reading. I don’t have any analytics here and even the logs from my hosting provider aren’t terribly useful for that purpose. It’s nice to have a little more information for a change. Even if I was using analytics, a quick “hey” is a lot more cool than just a number in a report.

One interesting thing I learned is that more people are reading my older posts than I would have guessed. Often (but not always!) it’s a guide of some sort. That makes sense and is a reassuring sign that search engines aren’t entirely useless just yet.

I know some other people have comment systems or guestbooks which I suppose serve a similar purpose. But those aren’t as funny as being able to anonymously ping someone through their own website.

Anyway, thanks for the messages. There’s no way for me to reply to any of them, but I do have fun reading them no matter what they’re about.

— JP