Eighth anniversary of this blog

Bonjour aux promeneurs, Hello walkers

picture of Chatelain's sculpture 

courtesy of Marcello 13 (Flickr)

With the idea to raise awareness of the at that time little known phenomenon of art environments on November 11, 2008 I published the first post in a weblog I entitled Outsider Environments Europe.

So today this blog has its eighth anniversary and as in previous years, I will relate here some data (as of November 10) as provided by Blogger's statistics "behind the scenes".

Number of visitors

On November 10, 2015 the all time number of page views was 420.277. On November 10, 2016 it was 583.287 an increase of 163.010 during  last year, or on the average 446 visitors a day.

All time page views by country

As in previous years here is the all time rank of top ten countries as regards page views:

 1.  United States 177030 (rank 2015: idem)

 2   Netherlands 63517 (rank 2015: idem)

 3.  France 57951 (rank 2015: idem)

 4.  Germany 46971 (rank 2015: idem)

 5   United Kingdom 41398 (rank 2015: idem)

 6.  Ukraine 20171 (rank 2015: idem)

 7.  Russia 18496 (rank 2015 idem)

8.  Spain 12020 (rank 2015: 9th)
9.  Italy 11366 (rank 2015: 8th)

10.  Poland 4619 (rank 2015: idem)

As in previous years, the top is rather stable: the same countries appear, almost all in the same order, except Italy and Spain which changed places.

The last time I paid close attention to the phenomenon of art environments in Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation and I feel happy that the interest from people in these countries remains at the same level

Most viewed sites all time

 1. Bill and Elisabeth Charge, Watford Shell garden 5814 (not in top ten)

 2. Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, Palais Idéal 5401 (rank 2015: 4)
3. Robert Garcet, Tour Eben-Ezer 4901 (rank 2015: 1)

 4. Abbé Fouré, Rochers sculptés 4782 (rank 2015: 2)

 5. Robert Tatin, Musée  4341 (rank 2015: 3)

 6. José María Garrido, Museo  4226 (rank 2015: idem)

 7. Bodan Litnianski, Jardin  3931 (rank 2015: 5)

 8  Joseph Pujiula i Vila, Labyrinth  3636 (rank 2015: 9)

 9. Chomo, Preludian art  3500 (rank 2015:7)

10. Karl Junker, Junkerhaus 3469 (rank 2015: 8)

The first place for Bill and Elisabeth Charge is without any doubt due to a one time event. End October 2016 the husband of a granddaughter of Bill and Elisabeth posted a message on the Watford Memories and History page on Facebook, asking -with a link to the relevant post in this blog- if anyone remembered the decorated garden. Well, thousands of people did and this resulted in over 5000 hits of the post in a few days time.

This year the top ten of most viewed sites once more is rather stable, with Garcet (from Belgium), Abbé Fouré, Robert Tatin, Facteur Cheval, Bodan Litnianski and Chomo (all from France), Josep Pujiula i Vila en José Maria Garrido (both from Spain) and Karl Junker (from Germany).

On the 11th place is Francisco González Grajera, El Capricho de Cotrina (3203 views), Willem van Genk, Arnhem bus station, who left the top ten, this year is on the 12th place (2923 views), and Erich Bödeker, Garten mit Skulpturen is on the 13th place (2908 views). 

Other creators of sites that rank high in terms of number of times viewed are: Robert Vasseur (2799 views), Yves Floc’h (2596 views, Raymond Isidore (Picassiette)  (2493 views, Oreste Fernando Nannetti   (2378 views) and Stephen Wright (2309 views)

Pages

The weblog also has some pages. Most popular is the Index by country/region, consulted over 98000 times, followed by the Index of names, consulted over 5000 times.

The General introduction attracted around 2200 viewers, the page about sources etc had some 1000 viewers  and the one about expositions over 1900.