Friday, June 15, 2007

Web page sillyness.

I just thought I'd say hi to all 39 people who've visited this blog since it's inception. Okay, it's not exactly 39 people, it's 39 computers! Since we've started I've been running Google Analytics on here. It's a really handy piece of software that tells me all sorts of details about who's accessing the site, when, what posts they're looking at, what web site they're coming from, what browser and OS they're using, and where they are. By the way, Mom, you appear to come from Steven's Point. I guess your ISP routes through there. Oh yeah, I've also got one hit from New Hampshire. I'm guessing Preston's family found this, too.

Dena, your website produces about 30 percent of all the views for the site. Interesting, no?


I know, I'm probably the ONLY person on Earth who cares about this, but it's a really cool tool; it lets me know what people care about on our site, and it lets me know when people hit our site, and which family members are reading our site. Google Analytics also includes 'campaigns', so you set goals for your site (hits, unique visitors, visitor loyalty, that sort of thing), and it lets you know when you reach them. Frankly, it's a really good tool that anyone who's serious about their website should be running.

This whole thing also makes me think about having a family blog instead of a family newsletter. All I'd have to do is make a blog with the whole family as contributors. I can see that part of the family is already reading the blog. I've got a hit from Tennessee that I assume is Ben or Shannon, and lots of hits from Utah that I can't entirely classify, but I don't think it's my sisters, because they aren't from Provo.

Oh, and in case anyone cares/wants, we have an RSS feed going from the main page, too. It's too handy not to have.

3 comments:

Margaret said...

I'm sure an RSS feed is nice, but I don't even know what it is!

Joe said...

RSS is a sort of live updater. If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to sites that have RSS feeds, and it will deliver the feed to your computer. Most web browsers now can use RSS for bookmarks, too.

For example, I set our site's RSS feed as a live bookmark on my browser, so it's a browser bookmark, but it automatically updates with the newest post.

Margaret said...

By the way, I believe it's "silliness"!