GoCertify Looks Back: Our 10 Most Popular Articles of 2018

Last week in this space we unveiled GoCertify's 10 Most Popular Certification Watch newsletters of 2018. Today, as the countdown to 2019 rolls forth, we're reflecting on our other major source of written content, IT certification articles.

There are typically two new certification articles per week, which means that over the course of a year, we bring you about 100 new articles addressing various IT and certification topics. Articles tend to run between 700 and 1,200 words in length, so that's somewhere in the ballpark of 105,000 words of new content.

For the sake of comparison, the Victorian-era romantic tragedy Wuthering Heights by Emily Bront� is 107,945 words long. So if you've been a faithful GoCertify reader and have taken in every article to appear on the site in 2018, then congratulations: You've accomplished the equivalent of reading Wuthering Heights from cover to cover.

(Not only that, but we didn't make you put up with Heathcliff and all of that weird stuff where he gets Catherine Earnshaw so worked up over never marrying him that she dies, and then he's like, "Oops, sorry, here's a piece of my hair. I'll totes make it up to you by secretly manipulating your daughter into marrying her cousin, until she decides to marry her other cousin instead.")

To clarify, all of these are articles that first appeared on the site this year. That is to say that we've considered 2018 articles only. There's a vast library of older articles available, and many of those are still regularly read, but they get enough attention already.

Without further ado, the 10 most popular IT certification articles to appear on the site this year are as follows:

1) Six Hot Linux Certifications for 2018 (Nathan Kimpel) — We seem to have really hit a sweet spot with this series. (You may have already noticed that we're doing it again for 2019.) There will be several more entries like this one on our list.

2) Six Hot Cybersecurity Certifications for 2018 (Reena Ghosh) — Hey, we said it was popular. You probably didn't realize that this series would be coming around again quite so quickly. Seriously, though, people seemed to really dig this stuff. It's like half of this list.

3) Google Offers 8-month IT Support Professional Certificate Program (Ed Tittel) — The most popular search engine in the universe is joining in the search for more skilled IT professionals. This is not Google's first foray into IT certification, but it's definitely the company's most high-profile foray to date.

4) Six Hot Networking Certifications for 2018 (Reena Ghosh) — Clearly we should just steer clear of all other content ideas and have our writers create "Six Hot" articles nonstop. Give the people what they want!

5) Get a Second (Free) Retake on Your Next Microsoft Exam (Ed Tittel) — Free stuff is never not cool. Microsoft uses this tactic pretty heavily, so there's a fair-to-decent chance that another article like this one will show up in next year's list.

6) Microsoft Changes Up Its Azure Certification Offerings (Ed Tittel) — Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform. But clouds are white, while "azure" is the color of the deep blue sea. Or maybe the deep blue sky. Of course, a blue sky typically doesn't have many clouds in it. We're confused.

7) Six Big Cybersecurity Certification Changes for 2018 (Mike Chapple) — Aha! We zigged when you were expecting us to zag! We can write "Six Hot" articles and "Six Big" articles. Nobody puts GoCertify in a corner.

8) Beta Exam for CompTIA PenTest+ Now Available (GoCertify Staff) — Mike Chapple foretold (see previous entry) that people would be interested in this new credential. He did not, however, foretell that they would be so interested that the "GoCertify Staff" byline would crack the year-end Top 10 list. Huzzah!

9) Anaconda Slithers Into the Data Science Certification Space (Ed Tittel) — Snakes alive! Anaconda, a Big Data firm that specializes in — wait for it! — Python, is jumping into the certification game with both feet. Wait. Snakes don't have feet!

10) CASP vs. CISSP: The Real Fight Is For Candidates' Attention (Ed Tittel) — Everybody loves a good cert-vs.-cert dustup! They love it so much, in fact, that this article soared up into our Top 10 despite only hitting the site in mid-October.