Cooking with Alison was created one year ago, today!  So, like I do every year on my own birthday, I’m going to reflect on the past year’s lessons, appreciate the people that made a difference, and make plans for improvement over the next year.  Here’s to you and, hopefully, to another year of Cooking with Alison!

Statistics From the First Year of Food Blogging:

Total number of views:  58, 764

Number of views on the busiest day (Jan. 13, 2011): 529

Number of posts:  232

The most popular posts were:  Four Different Sauces for Mushroom Ravioli, How to Steam Cook Food, and Cheong Fun (Rice Noodle Rolls) With Shrimp

Number of email subscribers:  45 (plus 8 wordpress.com subscribers)

Number of email subscribers lost:  4 – It is at this point that I’d like to give a shout out to my dad, because he is one of the people that unsubscribed, haha.  (I was posting too frequently for him.)  Love you dad!  🙂

Unfortunately, I don’t currently have a way of knowing how many RSS subscribers there are (or how many I’ve lost).  😉

Number of websites inspired by Cooking with Alison:  1  (My love affair with everything)

Most Importantly, Thank Yous:

First and foremost, Thank You to Everyone who has ever visited my site!  I really appreciate you taking the time to look at it!  A Special Thank You to the subscribers!

Thank You to Everyone who has ever shared a comment!  Your comments truly influence the direction of this site.  For example, in response to a question that Cathy asked about my steaming equipment, I wrote the post “How to Steam Cook Food” which became the second most popular post on this website!

I’d like to give Lily Ng (owner of the Very popular – and one of my favourite food blogs – Lily’s Wai Sek Hong) a Huge Thank You for adding Cooking with Alison to her blog roll.  Thanks to her kindness, this site gained more exposure which encouraged me to keep food blogging.

A personal thank you to my sister, Krystal, who is my self-appointed Food Blog Manager  🙂  She is a gracious taste-tester, she provides excellent constructive criticism, and the Recipe Index and How To category were her great ideas.

Ed deserves some serious recognition for putting up with the incessant [often one sided] conversations about the food blog  🙂  Back when I had an average of 5 hits per week, I called or emailed him Every single time someone visited my site, haha.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge WordPress.com.  I’ve never blogged before, so I can’t make comparisons to other providers, but WordPress.com has the BEST support team I have ever encountered.  They are extremely helpful and have always responded to questions and fixed issues promptly.  Furthermore, they are regularly updating their system and offering new features/functions.  They’ve made my first blogging experience extremely pleasant and user-friendly.