Angelqueen Traditionalist Forum

Angelqueen has just had its 3rd Birthday. I have popped onto the Forums there for some time, since it is an excellent source of news and information. Previously I have avoided linking to this wonderful Forum because I did not want my own views to be considered on equal footing to some of the members there.

But really, on any Forum, we can expect to meet lots of different people. If the discussions there often get overly cynical it is likely to be due to people's bitter experiences, and I am not one to judge. But its success over such a short period of time really goes to show the broad spectrum of 'Traditional Catholicism' and the amount of Catholics who are now interested in discovering their roots. I just wanted to attach below a recent email (I am on their 'Tradlist'!) which celebrates their anniversary and gives some stats of their success. I have also added a newsfeed to this site at the bottom of my sidebar.

AQ forum 3rd anniversary: Stats, information and prayers

Angelqueen.org
February 7, 2007
Link to article

Today, February 7, 2007 marks the third anniversary of the inception of the Angelqueen.org discussion forum. I thought I’d post some stats and info.

Although “hits” is only a bell weather for traffic analysis, according to the snapshot of traffic for 2006, AQ logged over 37.4 million hits and over 11.6 million pageviews last year, not including the gap over the summer when traffic wasn’t logged because of the database issues.

A better indication of how many visitors a site is receiving is user “sessions”. The average user sessions per day for 2006 was slightly under 3,500.

We’re trending up significantly so far this year. I ran a summary for the beginning of this year, starting on January 1st up until yesterday (Feb 6th) and got the following:

We’re currently averaging around 4,400 sessions per day and around 5 million hits per month. At this rate, even if we don’t continue to trend upward as we have been, we will have received around 60 million hits and well over 20 million pageviews at the end of 2007 or nearly double that of 2006.

Last Friday, we had nearly 10,000 sessions.

According to Alexa, the Amazon internet traffic aggregator, AQ has been right around or in the top 50,000 internet sites worldwide for quite some time now and trending upward. We have surpassed many long established Novus Ordo web venues (the USCCB News site, CatholicNews.com comes to mind) and we are within striking distance of many other established sites that get far more mainstream exposure and advertising than we do.



Another point to remember is that “The Tradlist”, which was a given to us by our French Connection, is 4,600 members strong.

On a board such as this, it is also worthy to consider not only the volume of traffic, but also who is visiting. Our membership includes well known authors, journalists, TV personalities, leaders of Catholic organizations and activist groups, Catholic publishers, high-profile priests and others who surprisingly have been very open about who they are and have made no effort to conceal their identity. Many public figures feel comfortable “hanging out” with us and enjoy our company. Not sure what to make of that, but I can’t see how it would be a bad thing.

There have also been many non-member visitors of note who browse here. Bishops, university heads, district superiors, writers for periodicals etc. AQ is the homepage of at least one traditional District Headquarters (no I’m not tellin’!). In 2006, we were visited at least 91 times, or around once every 4 days, by Vatican computers as well as many times by government computers in the US House and Senate.

The above data and info only touches on who we know has been visiting with us. The amount of unknown lurkers far outnumbers the total membership and those we are aware of. So it’s anybody’s guess as to who might be reading here, or what they might be reading at any give time.

What about future priests, bishops or leaders? Perhaps a future pope will have read here or already has. In this day and age when nearly everyone is cruising the information super-highway, I go as far as to say it would actually be highly improbable that such people would not have had some type of interaction with the most visited traditional Catholic website on the planet.

The point of all of this is not for us to able to brag or feel important or pat ourselves on the back. It should only highlight that we - over a surprisingly short period of time - have accomplished much. We are taking part in something that is influential, relevant and directional. We are also doing our part in proving that despite the best efforts of our detractors, the era of traditional Catholics and traditional Catholicism being kicked to the curb, isolated, marginalized, divided and forced into obscurity is beginning to realize its well-deserved end. Despite all of the adversity, we do have the means to teach, learn, share, communicate, inform, support and build up our great faith to each other and the world around us.

Although this should be good News to all of us, there is still much to do and we must continue to sow seeds, strengthen tradition, zealously assume our role as Church militant and bring as many others along as we can. We can do this.

Who would have thought what began three years ago as a refuge for a few friends on the wrong end of trad-hazing would have grown to what it is now?

Blessed be the Mother of God, Mary, Queen of Angels. Blessed be her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. For the glory of God and out of love of our fellow man, may we be guided, protected and strengthened in our efforts to do our part, however great or small in aiding in the restoration of His Holy Church and spreading His Holy Word.