How much time do I spend on writing this blog ?

Well that was one commentators question late last week.

So with 9 months experience, I thought I’d comment on that. And the question did get me thinking how much time did I actually spend on this blog. As ever, its the “How long is a piece of string ?” question.

Writing this post, will probably take me no more than 30 minutes in total – WordPress does most of the html coding/CSS for me with only a bit of formating of text in html that I do, the rest is just typing.

I mull over the posts I make when I’m driving/in the shower/feeding the cats so 1 have most of the ideas ready to roll before the computer is up and running even.

The more time consuming issue is the taking of, manipulation and editing of photos. For the Xmashammer 2012 game, I edited the number of photos down to 70, but I probably took twice that number. As my old cameras only holds about 35 pictures on its memory card, I have to download it several times to the computer into a new folder. I then have to:

• Wade through the pictures and keep only those that are in focus and relevant
• Deleting duplicate/out of focus pictures
• Then with what is left I have to change the colour and light levels, and in many cases crop the images.
• Then upload them to my photobucket account, the speed of this is variable.

This takes quite some time. To get the four photos of the Arcane Fulcrum, took at least 30 minutes for instance. if nothing else, in running this blog I’ve learnt a lot of photograpy skills – and yes I have a long way to go on them still !

Further, as regular readers will have noticed, I also have to seize the chance to take photos when light levels are good (though I did indulge in buying another light lamp for the photobox, so that should make it easier).

This issue of photo editting is one reason why I have not posted much for 4 days – I have loads of photos from Monday’s WHFB Storm of Magic game but have not had time to edit them a yet – too much real world work.

If a post is containing lots of links to either images, or to other websites, that adds to the time taken. You have to open up multiple browser windows, locate websites and add the html link codes to the post itself, and then check they all work ok.

So in total today, in publishing the Arcane Fulcrums post, and this one, I’ll have spent about 45 minutes typing away, but there is an additional 30 minutes or so for the photos and uploading them.

But wait, that’s not all !

On top of the actual postings, I also have to approve comments, and sort through any spam that WordPress is not sure about. I typically get 3 spam messages today that get through the automatic spam filters (1,335 got stopped by the auto filters). Often they take a few seconds to delete, others might be plausible enough to take a bit longer over, and even on occasions some are ok and get approved. So there is an admin time of probably 5 minutes a day, and if I’m in a particularly sad mood, I look at the site stats.

I’m not blogging for the sake of getting a big audience, the original idea was to host photos of my gaming groups’ efforts, but it is interesting as a (professional) webmaster to see who is looking at what and how they get here. (Current average of ~100 views per day, ~2 views per unique visitor)

Now, I’d best go and edit the photos from Monday’s game, and see if I can photo One Armed Sutton and his creations…