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Web analysis terms

For those of you who are watching me struggle to get up to speed with web site stuff, let me report a new breakthrough. As I mentioned earlier, I have set up with Google Analytics for the 4 sites I am developing. It was interesting (but of no special importance) to see from what countries visitors came in the last week or so (when I started getting data). But some of the BIG statistics had no meaning. So I looked them up in Google and here are the (mostly Wikipedia) meanings:

Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of people who arrive at any of my pages and never go to any other of my pages from there. Either they came by mistake or else, having arrived, they decided nothing else was interesting enough to click on. I learn that 50% is generally considered good–only one in two stays around. Continue reading “Web analysis terms”

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Rudder modification to reduce tiller force

Sketch of Rudder Modification

One of my more successful modifications has been to add an area ahead of the pivot line defined by the hinges. Unmodified, the helmsperson has to provide all the force to opppose the water running past the rudder surface. Admittedly the length of the tiller arm helps, but I was finding it taking more force than I wanted to come about for a tack.

Since the rudder was built out of fiberglass-covered plywood, it was a simple matter to add some area ahead of the pivot to have the water push the forward area of the rudder  in the direction of the tiller, getting the water to aid the effort. Continue reading “Rudder modification to reduce tiller force”
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Higher-speed glitz

My friend Carl agreed to test out my new improved pages. He has a “tablet” of some sort (non-iPad) as well as a hard-wired networked computer. The latter seems to behave just like my Dell Laptop but the tablet seemed to take forever to load. Perhaps the wireless-ness of the network connection was part of the problem, but my goal is to have the pages work well for anyone, regardless of the degree of state-of-the-art they represent. As I went back to the graphics (pictures) that I added at the top, I was going to reduce the JPEG quality to “low” to reduce the file size, but I discovered Photoshop has a choice to save pictures “for the web.” Continue reading “Higher-speed glitz”

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Glitz at last

I now have the basic machinery of these sites working. The Word Press 2011 theme provides all I need (as far as I can tell at this moment) in terms of putting up posts and pages as well as receiving comments and getting data on site visits. It seemed like it was finally time to add some graphics to give a bit more visual interest to the sites. Continue reading “Glitz at last”

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Subscribers and notifications

Having encountered web sites that required me to identify myself before I could post a comment and offered to notify me when new things were posted, I had a passing familiarity with the (annoying) process. When someone commented that they wished my site had such a feature, I was flattered. I take that to indicate I am progressing in the crawl-walk-run sequence relative to WordPress. As evidence I immediately knew to search for a plugin to add notification and sure enough I found several including one called subscribe2.

As the administrator it is difficult to see how the plugin looks to a new visitor, so I welcome comments from you who visit the sites. You may post a comment or email me at schultz@pei.sympatico.ca.

Have I mentioned that a next step may be to bring web-related emails over to an address associated with the account?

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What to do in cold weather

It is too cold at home to really get going on the new season’s boat modifications. Every year I make a list of the things to do before the spring/summer launch. Here in Eastern Canada the cold season, while not as intense, is much longer lasting than in the US. Aside from cold feet and scraping snow off, the big problem is the curing of epoxy. I always get the “fast” hardener, but that simply means at 50F or 60F it takes 4 hours instead of two days to set (as best I can tell, even at temperatures around 40F, it eventually sets, but that slows work down. Using heat lamps or fitting the 26′ long x 15′ wide x 12′ high trimaran into a shelter is difficult and, in any case the extra labor is easily avoided by simply waiting for warmer weather. Continue reading “What to do in cold weather”

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How much information is enough?

Being dragged inexorably along, I now have several days of Google Analytics information on my 4 web sites. My friend Carl showed me how I could go directly to analytics and find out all sorts of things. There are things like pageloads, exits and uniques which I assume are counts of how many people have gone to each of the pages of each site. I can find out where in the world these viewers were located: France, India, China and several eastern European countries as well as the US. I could even find out that the 2 hits in the US were from Indiana (and that they were me or my friends here where we are visiting grandchildren!). Continue reading “How much information is enough?”

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Content vs. Glitz

Today I have been discussing web sites with a friend and It has become clear to me that it is content that is key. Having a very attention-getting set of graphics and dynamic moving pictures looks very modern (and young), but I saw a page that had marvelous graphics with colored text that just invited clicking for more information, only to find that it was not a real “click” spot and nothing came up. The few pages had almost no “content” except the graphics–almost no text describing anything about which one might wish to find more information. Continue reading “Content vs. Glitz”

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Black&white photos

Most of my authors supply photographs to include in their books. Since I have grown familiar with Photoshop (elements 9 now), I enjoy optimizing them for inclusion. There are several things to consider:

  • 1. The resolution of the picture should be 300 dpi in the final size on the page. That is easily done by using the image size instruction, but it requires advance knowledge of the desired size on the page of the final layout. It doesn’t work to just drag a corner on the page because the pixels per inch changes as the size is changed. So the final resolution needs to be set at layout time. I usually leave the pictures at their original resolution until just before inserting in the book. Continue reading “Black&white photos”