Thoughts on Java Report October 2016
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When I announced that I had quit my day job to work full-time on Thoughts on Java, I got a lot of great feedback and questions about my plans for the site. If you’re interested in these kinds of posts, I’m happy to give you a look behind the scenes and share my monthly goals and progress with you.
What happened in September
September was the first month I worked full-time on Thoughts on Java. It was tough but also one of the best months I had for quite a while 🙂
When I announced that I would become my own boss and work full-time from home, a lot of people asked me how I would organize my work without an office and a fixed schedule. Would I be able to put enough effort into it?
I never worried about these things, and I proved myself right. Lack of motivation or not finding enough time were never an issue.
Sure, some days didn’t go as planned and I had to take care of other things. If you have small kids, you know what I’m talking about …
But in the end, I was always able to work a few extra hours in the evening or on the following days. In the end, I worked more hours than in a regular job, but I decided when and where I did it. Right now, for example, I’m sitting at my local Starbucks, write this post and enjoy a chai tea.
And still, there were several ideas I couldn’t work on (my wife would tell you that I will aways have more ideas than time available and she’s probably right 😉 ).
Anyways, I accomplished all goals for September. I launched the free Thoughts on Java Library, published my first regular YouTube videos and started the beta group for the new Advanced Hibernate Training.
Posts & Videos
September was the first month in which I not only wrote 3 blog posts a week, I also published videos on YouTube.
Well, at least in this week which is officially not September anymore. But I published them after the September Report and before the October Report. I think that counts for September …
Here is an overview of last month’s posts and videos:
As always, I published a Java Weekly on every Monday to share the most interesting posts I had read. Here you can find all Java Weekly posts, and I also recorded one on video.
Wednesday’s long-form tutorials covered several topics. The post about Hibernate best practices was by far the most popular one and the more basic inheritance guide also got a lot of attention.
As always, I created a cheat sheet for each post which you can now download from the Thoughts on Java Library.
Here is a complete list of all long-form tutorials I published last month:
- How to map encrypted database columns with Hibernate’s @ColumnTransformer annotation
- Hibernate Best Practices
- Complete Guide: Inheritance strategies with JPA and Hibernate
- Is your query too complex for JPA and Hibernate?
- How to generate UUIDs as primary keys with Hibernate
And I also published a Hibernate Tip post every Thursday. I still plan to create a Hibernate Tips ebook, but for now, I have to focus on the new training. Here are the Hibernate Tips I wrote in September:
- Hibernate Tips: Count the executed queries in a Session
- Hibernate Tips: How to access Hibernate APIs from JPA
- Hibernate Tips: Cache preprocessed, non-persistent attributes
- Hibernate Tips: Use an auto-incremented column as primary key
- Hibernate Tips: How to use pagination with JPQL
I also published my first 2 regular videos on Youtube:
Traffic numbers
Traffic wise, September was the best month ever. Even with one day less than in the previous month, the number of page views grew by almost 9.5% to over 90k views. Let’s see if we can get it above 100k in October.
At the moment, I’m not sure about the main reason for this growth. Maybe it’s just natural growth over time or the effect of reliably publishing 3 posts a week.
Moving the Hibernate Tip from Friday to Thursday also had some effect, and I will keep it like that. But it didn’t bring account for 7,000 additional views.
What is planned for October
I have 2 main goals for October: The creation of the new Advanced Hibernate Online Training and the launch of both Hibernate training.
If you’re following me for a while, you know that I open the signup for my online training only for a few weeks. The reason for it is simple, you’re not just getting a bunch of videos, I’m also investing a lot of time to support you and answer your questions. I simply can’t do that 365 days a year. So I’m offering the training only 2-3 times a year and make sure that I’m available when you need me.
Within the next few weeks, I will open the signup for both of my online training, the Hibernate Performance Tuning Online Training and the new Advanced Hibernate Online Training. If you like to join one or even both of them, you should put yourself on the waiting list to make sure you don’t miss it.
Besides that, I will continue to post 3 times a week and work on the YouTube channel. I’m looking forward to see how the channel develops when I post new videos on a weekly basis.
