We look back at the most popular articles from our record-breaking January, and preview a few February highlights.

With 823,899 page views, Opensource.com broke all traffic records in January, beating our previous record of 819,553 set in December 2015. We published 101 articles in January, including 19 articles in our SCaLE 14x series and 10 articles in our Getting Started in Open Source series.

January also marked our six-year anniversary. To celebrate our anniversary, we announced the winners of our our 2016 Opensource.com Community Awards. See the announcement for the full list of winners in the People’s Choice, Reader’s Choice, Best Interview, Moderator’s Choice, and Emerging Contributor award categories.

In The Open Org channel, topics about open leadership attracted more than 12,000 page views in January. Readers are still steadily downloading and sharing feedback on the community-produced Open Organization Field Guide. We are also planning for our upcoming #OpenOrgChat Twitter events. 

Editor’s Pick 6

Here are six articles you might have missed in January:

1. Plerd: A Dropbox-friendly Markdown blog platform—by D Ruth Bavousett
   Written in Perl, Plerd can be told to watch a Dropbox-synched directory with the plerdwatcher daemon, which will republish files as it sees changes.
2. Cyborg jobs are here to stay—by Dr. Bryson Payne
   New technologies and coding (plus a creative dose of the arts) must be woven into our children’s experiences, including—but not limited to—the K-12 curriculum..
3. Hacking the patent system: Open source and patents—by Rob Tiller
   Rob Tiller interviews Daniel Nazer, staff attorney at the Electronic Fronteir Foundation, about the patent system and open source licensing.
4. Student-run help desk introduces teens to Linux—by Susan Black
   The first young woman to join the Penn Manor High School Student Help Desk explains how the independent study course teaches students about software, hardware, technical support, and customer service skills.
5. Open source software powers NASA’s Mars VR project—by Aleksandar Todorović
   In this interview with Parker Abercrombie, a software engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we find out about OnSight, a blend of open source and proprietary software that lets users experience Mars in virtual reality.
6. 11 steps to running an online community meeting—by Laura Hillinger
   Learn best practices for community calls and how they can spur growth.

Top 10 articles published in January

1. Which Linux distribution do you use? [poll]—by Opensource.com editors
2. One man’s trash is another man’s Linux computer—by Drew Kwashna
3. How to set up a Linux-based music server at home—by Chris Hermansen
4. Hacking your Linux computer for a better listening experience—by Chris Hermansen
5. 3 open source personal finance tools for Linux—by Jason Baker
6. An introduction to OpenStack clouds for beginners—by Sandeep Khuperkar
7. Configuring Linux for music recording and production—by Aaron Wolf
8. 3 smart GIMP tricks—by Rikki Endsley
9. 8 reasons to make the switch to IPv6—by Girish Managoli
10. Top 10 open source legal developments in 2015—by Mark Radcliffe

Coming up

This week we launched a new Open Music column by Chris Hermansen. Two of his January articles made it to our top 10 list for the month, and we’re excited to welcome him to our team of columnists.

On February 22, we’ll kick off our Careers in Open Source series. Our call for article proposals is open for our March Diversity in Open Source series, and we’re already planning ahead for our April Open Hardware series. Send us your story idea, and see our 2016 editorial calendar and community columns for more writing opportunities. We’ve rounded up 7 big reasons to contribute to Opensource.com. Got questions? Email us at open@opensource.com, or connect with editors, community moderators, and writers in Freenode IRC at #opensource.com.