We have all driven by the McDonalds signs that say over a Billion served, or Billions and Billions served. What does that actually mean? What is a billion?
For those that are unsure: 1 billion = 1,000 million.
On a global scale, current population estimates tell us that there are over 8 billion people living on the planet Earth right now. Now how many of them are saxophone players? Who knows. It’s not like anyone has conducted a census of the world’s population to discover musical predilections. 😉
What I can tell you with 100% certainty, is that in the 22 years that Bassic Sax has been in existence, over 1 billion pages have been served to its visitors. That’s simply cray, cray!
bassic-sax.ca became bassic-sax.info
Now in case you are thinking I simply made this up, and am pulling this number out of my ass, here are some bassic facts:
- When Bassic Sax first started, the website had a .ca extension; was created in HTML; and was hosted by a company out of California. (Future Pages IIRC.)
- Sometime in the early in the early 2000s, Bassic Sax was moved to another hosting company (Lunar Pages), and in 2008 the Bassic Sax Blog was created using a CMS to complement the original HTML site.
- In 2010 the original HTML-driven Bassic Site was entirely retooled and began its new life as a CMS-driven site.
- Later in 2010 a gallery of saxophone photos powered by 4Images was added.
- Bassic Sax motored along like this for a couple of years until the traffic got so congested that it completely and utterly crashed the shared hosting environment it was in. At that time, it was receiving close to 1,000 unique visitors a day.
- In a very unethical move, Lunar Pages simply took bassic-sax.ca offline with no notice, around Thanksgiving 2012.
- After I managed to find it a new home, Pete Hales was kind enough to move all the databases to GoDaddy under the .info extension where it happily lived for another 5 years, until there it too outgrew its shared hosting package.
- The decision was made to move to a VPS server at another company, and then another, and finally yet another—all the while the number of daily and monthly visitors continued, and still continues, to grow.
- During 2017, when Pete and I were were looking into VPS server hosting, the decision was made to combine our two saxophone galleries into one. And in 2018, the new and improved Bassic Sax Pix was born, which contains the best of both of our previous galleries.
How can I have even close to a billion pages served?
A couple of weekends ago I was looking up something on the dashboard of the server, and I was shocked by what I was seeing when it came to traffic. I decided I needed to take a deeper dive into the numbers to see what was going on. How was it possible I was getting so much traffic into my site? What were people looking at?
In the beginning I used to download my monthly stats from the server company. I must admit however, at some point I became rather complacent about the numbers when they became so crazy huge, and hit the multiple millions of page views. Fast forward more than a decade, and suddenly I find myself in a situation in which I am nearly drowning in website traffic, and the resultant email. How did this happen?
Very simply put: The more search engines crawl and index a site; the more real, quality content they find it has; and the more related that content it is to the site’s stated purpose; the greater the chances search engines will rank a site higher in search results. This isn’t some magic formula of trying to crack an algorithm. It is simply being true to the stated purpose of your site, and providing site visitors quality content.
Ever since day 1 when my web designer created the first iteration of Bassic Sax, this website has never strayed from its stated purpose. While its scope may have expanded—to things such as mid century German-made saxophones, sax-shaped “things”, etc—it never strayed away from its purpose of being a bass saxophone resource site.
And here we in 2022
So here I sit almost 22 years to the day after the purchase of my first website domain, bassic-sax.ca, with over 1 billion page visits over all its various domains, subdomains, galleries, and so forth. To put it mildly, it is simply very humbling.
I have learned an incredible amount over these last 2+ decades, and have met and corresponded with some very wonderful and fantastic people. Some I have even been lucky enough to develop friendships with.
Like all of you, I have experienced some serious ups and downs over the past 20 years. And like many of you, I have experienced a number of serious health struggles that have knocked me on my ass.
One health issue in particular, required me to teach myself almost an entirely new way to process auditory and visual information in order to play with groups again. If it were not for neuroplasticity; a fabulous team of doctors; a fantastic group of friends and bandmates; a totally supportive partner who stood by me every step of the way; and my own sheer German sturness; I would be stuck in a care facility somewhere totally unable to function. Although I will never be like I was, at least I can do a few things that bring me pleasure, and on a good day, I can almost pass for the kind of player I used to be. 😉
I want to thank all of you who have come along with me for the ride over the last 20+ years. You folks are fantastic.
Although none of us knows what the next day brings, let alone the next 20 years, with your continued support, Bassic Sax will continue to be around in one way or another for some time to come.
Thank you to those of you who have donated to the ongoing hosting costs. Every little bit helps.
If you compare this site to pretty much any other like it, you will notice there are no ads on Bassic Sax. That’s because Pete and are still paying for all the costs ourselves, and using donations to supplement those costs.
If you value the information on this site, and want to see it continue and grow, I encourage you to contribute something towards the cause. Thank you.
