Help with Blog sites
Alex Cessford
but my reason for posting it here is that I would greatly appreciate
help from the friendly people in my RISC OS world rather than go
swimming in the unknown Windows PC forums which I do not subscribe to,
except in extreme circumstances.
There may be a better RISC OS forum than this one for my query, but I
do not know what that may be. If there is, please help by directing
me.
Over two years ago, wearing my parish councillor's hat, I persuaded my
council to invest in a domain with Orpheus Internet, and on which I
built our new council website. It went quite well, so last November
the chairman and I got our fellow members to agree to follow it up by
purchasing another domain from Orpheus, this time for a village blog
site.
We do not know much about blogs, but we are learning fast. My query is
this however:
With a parish population of 1,000, not all of whom possess computers,
since June 2007 our council site has to date had 3,278 hits so 3.6 a
day rough average. Our blog site, launched on 12 Dec. 09, in the last
three days alone has averaged 100 hits a day, counter tonight standing
at 933, (17 of those within the last hour alone!).
Ok parish council sites are no match for Facebook and Twitter, but is
our blog site, with only ten,(quite good but hardly earth-shattering),
articles currently on it, a factor of one hundred times per day more
interesting?
I'm 65, (been using Acorns since 1982, took part in the BBC Domesday
Survey in 1987), but I like to think I'm still lively, alert and
anyway very heavily into computers and internet. What is it that I
don't understand, here?
--
Alex.
Alex Cessford
Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <3b2389d45...@cessford.org.uk>,
> Alex Cessford <al...@cessford.org.uk> wrote:
>> I'm 65, (been using Acorns since 1982, took part in the BBC Domesday
>> Survey in 1987), but I like to think I'm still lively, alert and
>> anyway very heavily into computers and internet. What is it that I
>> don't understand, here?
> Human nature.
> Don't worry, neither does anyone else.
Hi Stuart,
Ho, ho!! :-)
--
Alex.
Derek.Moody
> With a parish population of 1,000, not all of whom possess computers,
> since June 2007 our council site has to date had 3,278 hits so 3.6 a
> day rough average. Our blog site, launched on 12 Dec. 09, in the last
> three days alone has averaged 100 hits a day, counter tonight standing
> at 933, (17 of those within the last hour alone!).
> anyway very heavily into computers and internet. What is it that I
> don't understand, here?
3 a day is about the background average for www sites, ie. there are a
great many more out there with fewer hits to balance the sort of level
that Google and the BBC get...
100 a day suggests that there is something on the blog that interests
people - ok, it's not a great many but if you can read the logs you
should see the referral strings and deduce which topics are attracting
visitors...
Way back in 1998 I was running a site related to Terry Pratchet fan
activity - it was bumbling along at under 300/day for ages until the
September student intake got web access when it zoomed to 30000/day
inside a week - my ISP at the time got quite snotty about it. The
students were networking with each other.
I wish I'd had the wit to take advantage of it at the time - It took
several years to come up with another topic as popular.
You want your visitors to begin telling friends, 'Hey look at this.'
(Sudden popularity when linked by a big, popular, site is called the
'Slashdot effect', or slashdotting - search for either and you'll find
plenty of references.)
Now you can begin to take advantage of the traffic - make sure there is
a link to the council site from the more popular blog site. Write
follow-up articles to the ones that are attracting attention. Try to
think of topics related to the popular ones that might interest the same
sort of visitor enough that they begin to link to you and add you to
their bookmarks.
Cheerio,
--
>> derek...@clara.net
Theo Markettos
> 3 a day is about the background average for www sites, ie. there are a
> great many more out there with fewer hits to balance the sort of level
> that Google and the BBC get...
>
> 100 a day suggests that there is something on the blog that interests
> people - ok, it's not a great many but if you can read the logs you
> should see the referral strings and deduce which topics are attracting
> visitors...
Do you know these hits are real people? For example, Google knows that
blogs are updated more frequently than static HTML, so it spiders them more
regularly. This is most likely to happen if the blog uses some common
software like Wordpress - Google will have shown their spider how to detect
and spider a Wordpress blog. Perhaps they check the blog's RSS feed on a
regular basis, and spider it in full if they spot a change?
Don't forget that blogs tend to have lots more pages than static HTML (eg
login page, monthly pages, articles sorted by tag etc etc) so that makes
lots more hits when spidering.
Also, there's some kind of cross-linking going on. I've seen Wordpress blog
posts where someone has posted something about a article on another Wordpress
blog. That seems to generate a comment post in the article being discussed.
This must be automated in some way, so I suspect others are scraping around
the blogs, munging the content and repackaging it elsewhere.
Theo
Alex Cessford
"Derek.Moody" <derek...@clara.net> wrote:
> In article <3b2389d45...@cessford.org.uk>, Alex Cessford
> <URL:mailto:al...@cessford.org.uk> wrote:
>> With a parish population of 1,000, not all of whom possess computers,
>> since June 2007 our council site has to date had 3,278 hits so 3.6 a
>> day rough average. Our blog site, launched on 12 Dec. 09, in the last
>> three days alone has averaged 100 hits a day, counter tonight standing
>> at 933, (17 of those within the last hour alone!).
>> anyway very heavily into computers and internet. What is it that I
>> don't understand, here?
> 3 a day is about the background average for www sites, ie. there are a
> great many more out there with fewer hits to balance the sort of level
> that Google and the BBC get...
Well whatever comes next in your reply, you have already given me
great reassurance regarding our parish council site, Derek, thank you
very much for that - as a conscientious parish councillor I am always
very aware that we need to have close regard to spending of public
money, so your statement re: the numbers is most helpful.
> 100 a day suggests that there is something on the blog that interests
> people - ok, it's not a great many but if you can read the logs you
> should see the referral strings and deduce which topics are attracting
> visitors...
Yes in theory I agree that the 100 figure does suggest what you say,
but in practice, given that there are only ten postings on there, and
they are hardly hot-topic news, whilst I'm only to keen to accept your
conclusion I am trying to be realistic! Have a look yourself:
the Blog site is: www.lbvblog.org
the council one is: www.theparishcouncil.org
The only thing is, that since the blog went live on 12th Dec, whilst
the visit hits have been very gratifying, it is not proving to be
remotely as interactive as we would like - only 6 reply comments, of
which about 4 are from myself and my council chairman between us. If
so many folk bother to visit it, why don't more of them leave
comments?
> Way back in 1998 I was running a site related to Terry Pratchet fan
> activity - it was bumbling along at under 300/day for ages until the
> September student intake got web access when it zoomed to 30000/day
> inside a week - my ISP at the time got quite snotty about it. The
> students were networking with each other.
Wow! that's given an even better insight as to how volatile such
things can be.
> I wish I'd had the wit to take advantage of it at the time - It took
> several years to come up with another topic as popular.
Yes, I'll bet!
> You want your visitors to begin telling friends, 'Hey look at this.'
Yes indeed. We put up a 8metre x 2metre banner in the village
announcing the blog's arrival to assist that process!
> (Sudden popularity when linked by a big, popular, site is called the
> 'Slashdot effect', or slashdotting - search for either and you'll find
> plenty of references.)
Ok, I'll go and have a look at that, thanks again.
> Now you can begin to take advantage of the traffic - make sure there is
> a link to the council site from the more popular blog site. Write
> follow-up articles to the ones that are attracting attention. Try to
> think of topics related to the popular ones that might interest the same
> sort of visitor enough that they begin to link to you and add you to
> their bookmarks.
This is helpful advice and much appreciated. We have already got a
link from the blog to the council site, and also a post from the
council. We have concealed the fact that the blog has originated from
the council, (both funding-wise and that it is myself and my chairman
who are behind the articles with a few exceptions). The parishioners
will almost certainly find out eventually that it is the council doing
it, (and we don't mind), but our intention is to present it as
something totally lacking in any council connection, because our
council site, in our view, not well visited and we hoped that the blog
would be perceived differently if thought to be independent - an idea
supported by our discussions with a parish council in Derbyshire, (we
are in Nottinghamshire), who had made the same discovery around two
years ago.
> Cheerio,
Best wishes,
--
Alex.
Alex Cessford
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Derek.Moody <derek...@clara.net> wrote:
>> 3 a day is about the background average for www sites, ie. there are a
>> great many more out there with fewer hits to balance the sort of level
>> that Google and the BBC get...
>>
>> 100 a day suggests that there is something on the blog that interests
>> people - ok, it's not a great many but if you can read the logs you
>> should see the referral strings and deduce which topics are attracting
>> visitors...
> Do you know these hits are real people?
Short answer - no!
> For example, Google knows that blogs are updated more frequently than
> static HTML, so it spiders them more regularly. This is most likely
> to happen if the blog uses some common software like Wordpress -
WordPress is indeed what we are using.
> Google will have shown their spider how to detect and spider a
> Wordpress blog. Perhaps they check the blog's RSS feed on a
> regular basis, and spider it in full if they spot a change?
Ah, right, that's helpful to know, thank you, Theo.
> Don't forget that blogs tend to have lots more pages than static HTML (eg
> login page, monthly pages, articles sorted by tag etc etc) so that makes
> lots more hits when spidering.
Not ours - yet anyway! We only launched it on 12th Dec. It currently
has just four pages, Home, About, Local Photos and Your Feedback. Home
has only ten posts, About just one para of explanatory text, Local
Photos just two set of pictures, and Your Feedback just on short
paragraph. That's it! Have a look: www.lbvblog.org
> Also, there's some kind of cross-linking going on. I've seen Wordpress blog
> posts where someone has posted something about a article on another Wordpress
> blog. That seems to generate a comment post in the article being discussed.
> This must be automated in some way, so I suspect others are scraping around
> the blogs, munging the content and repackaging it elsewhere.
> Theo
I have no way of knowing if cross-linking is going on with our blog,
but I'd think it highly unlikely given the low level of content and
also, (no disrepect to the authors), the nature of the content.
--
Alex.
Theo Markettos
> In message <K9z*Uh...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>
> Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > Don't forget that blogs tend to have lots more pages than static HTML (eg
> > login page, monthly pages, articles sorted by tag etc etc) so that makes
> > lots more hits when spidering.
> Not ours - yet anyway! We only launched it on 12th Dec. It currently
> has just four pages, Home, About, Local Photos and Your Feedback. Home
> has only ten posts, About just one para of explanatory text, Local
> Photos just two set of pictures, and Your Feedback just on short
> paragraph. That's it! Have a look: www.lbvblog.org
Yes, but that's not what the spider sees. Look at all the links the blog
produces. For example:
http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=158
http://www.lbvblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/weather.jpg
http://www.lbvblog.org/?m=20100105
http://www.lbvblog.org/?m=200912
http://www.lbvblog.org/?cat=3
http://www.lbvblog.org/?cat=4
http://www.lbvblog.org/?feed=rss2
http://www.lbvblog.org/?feed=comments-rss2
http://www.lbvblog.org/?feed=rss2&p=114
http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=98
http://www.lbvblog.org/?paged=2
http://www.lbvblog.org/wp-login.php
http://www.lbvblog.org/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword
Each article has an entry in the calendar and an RSS feed, and then there
are monthly index pages, pages of previous articles, RSS feeds of various
kinds, images, etc etc. The hits all add up.
If you look at an individual page, like:
http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=37
it says 'Page visits 5' on the bottom. Which is more likely to be an
accurate number. Also, your hosting package will probably have a column for
'unique visitors' or something like that, rather than repeated hits from the
same IP address.
Theo
Alex Cessford
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
Wow! I'd no idea this went on! I like to think that I am a very
competent and experienced, (but not technically able), computer user,
(started with a BBC Micro in about 1982-ish, and was I.T.Co-ordinator
at the primary school I used to teach at), but as I said in my
original post, we, (that's the council chairman and myself), do not
know much about blogs.
I know in principle what RSS feeds are, but was under the impression
they only operated if you deliberately set them up and organised their
link. How are they operating on our blog when neither of us has
specifically set one up? Presumably this is one of the features of a
blog site that we don't understand?
I hadn't realised either that the blog site automatically links every
article to the calendar! Does that explain the date displayed in red,
presumably?
> If you look at an individual page, like:
> http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=37
I've just clicked that link - result, another learning curve! I didn't
know that when an article is posted, and then as far as I know is
present on the HOME page, it actually exists on the site's server as a
separate page as well - in this case, ?p=37 I've just used !FTPc to
have a look at the server's contents - wow again! Loads of stuff.
> it says 'Page visits 5' on the bottom. Which is more likely to be an
> accurate number. Also, your hosting package will probably have a column for
> 'unique visitors' or something like that, rather than repeated hits from the
> same IP address.
> Theo
You are certainly opening my eyes Theo thank you.
Any further education regarding my replies above would be equally as
appreciated.
--
Alex.
Theo Markettos
> Wow! I'd no idea this went on! I like to think that I am a very
> competent and experienced, (but not technically able), computer user,
> (started with a BBC Micro in about 1982-ish, and was I.T.Co-ordinator
> at the primary school I used to teach at), but as I said in my
> original post, we, (that's the council chairman and myself), do not
> know much about blogs.
Hover your mouse over all the different bits of the page and you'll see all
the links.
> I know in principle what RSS feeds are, but was under the impression
> they only operated if you deliberately set them up and organised their
> link. How are they operating on our blog when neither of us has
> specifically set one up? Presumably this is one of the features of a
> blog site that we don't understand?
It comes 'for free' with the software. WordPress (and similar kinds of
software, eg for web forums) stores all the content in a database. It can
present views of this database in various ways: the blog front page, the
page for the item, the comments on the item, organised by date, organised by
tag, a view for editing, a raw dump for backup etc etc. One of these is to
convert it to RSS. If you view in a browser like Firefox you'll see on some
pages, next to the address bar, a series of orange concentric arcs. That's
the RSS symbol - the HTML code has told Firefox that there's an RSS feed
associated with this page, and if you click on the orange icon you can get
Firefox to subscribe. Do a 'view source' on the HTML output and you'll see
the feed linked.
RSS feeds from databases are jolly useful... for example, I read some web
forums. They aren't busy enough to have new content every day, and I read
too many to check by hand. But the admin has turned on the RSS feature (or
failed to switch it off). That means I can pull up an RSS feed of each
board, and see at a glance which boards have new messages. On most forum
software I can also read the messages via RSS too. It's the closest web
forums get to Usenet in terms of merging all the content from different
topics in one place and making them quick to read. I do similar for the
blogs I read.
> I hadn't realised either that the blog site automatically links every
> article to the calendar! Does that explain the date displayed in red,
> presumably?
Yes.
> > If you look at an individual page, like:
> > http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=37
> I've just clicked that link - result, another learning curve! I didn't
> know that when an article is posted, and then as far as I know is
> present on the HOME page, it actually exists on the site's server as a
> separate page as well - in this case, ?p=37 I've just used !FTPc to
> have a look at the server's contents - wow again! Loads of stuff.
That's mostly all the control panels, editing dialogues and so on. There
are a bunch of PHP pages that are which are mostly for control of the blog,
while all the things that end lbvblog.org/?xyz=something are options for the
main blog-displaying page (probably called something like index.php). All
the latter are all different 'views' of the database generated from the same
script.
> You are certainly opening my eyes Theo thank you.
> Any further education regarding my replies above would be equally as
> appreciated.
A pleasure to be of service :)
Theo
Kevin Wells
Alex Cessford <al...@cessford.org.uk> wrote:
>
>I know in principle what RSS feeds are, but was under the impression
>they only operated if you deliberately set them up and organised their
>link. How are they operating on our blog when neither of us has
>specifically set one up? Presumably this is one of the features of a
>blog site that we don't understand?
Most blogging software generates rss feeds automatically, it takes the
information from the database and inserts the rss tags in.
>
>I hadn't realised either that the blog site automatically links every
>article to the calendar! Does that explain the date displayed in red,
>presumably?
>
>> If you look at an individual page, like:
>> http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=37
>I've just clicked that link - result, another learning curve! I didn't
>know that when an article is posted, and then as far as I know is
>present on the HOME page, it actually exists on the site's server as a
>separate page as well - in this case, ?p=37 I've just used !FTPc to
>have a look at the server's contents - wow again! Loads of stuff.
>
The ?p= is handled by the blogging software and it's database to
automatically make each new article a new page with the html tags in.
--
Kev Wells http://riscos.kevsoft.co.uk/
http://kevsoft.co.uk/ http://kevsoft.co.uk/AleQuest/
ICQ 238580561
Save England http://www.thecep.org.uk/cep_petition.shtml
Alex Cessford
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
First, a sincere thank you very much indeed to both Kevin and Theo. I
now feel I have a much better understanding of what is going on with
our blog site.
I am used to creating websites, (eg.our parish council one), my
chairman is similarly capable, but as blogs were a totally new world
to both him and myself, there was no way we were going to be able to
create a village blog site other than simply aping the method used by
the fellow parish council that we got the idea from, www.parwich.org
I guess that is a reasonable enough reason for doing it the way we
did, but the down side is that as we did not create it ourselves, we
have not had the insight into what is going on, nor the control of it
for that matter.
However, having played with its knobs and buttons for a while now,
together with the superb support of Dan at Orpheus Internet, who are
hosting the blog site for us, we are gradually getting a grasp of what
we can do with it.
Thank you again. I'll go and have a play with Firefox and view the
source, as you suggest.
> RSS feeds from databases are jolly useful... for example, I read some web
> forums. They aren't busy enough to have new content every day, and I read
> too many to check by hand. But the admin has turned on the RSS feature (or
> failed to switch it off). That means I can pull up an RSS feed of each
> board, and see at a glance which boards have new messages. On most forum
> software I can also read the messages via RSS too. It's the closest web
> forums get to Usenet in terms of merging all the content from different
> topics in one place and making them quick to read. I do similar for the
> blogs I read.
Yes, that does make sense. I guess I could set up a RSS feed from our
council site too, (www.theparishcouncil.org), in the hope that it
might encourage more folk to keep an eye on updates there if RSS was
present to make that easier for them. I'll have to think about that.
>> I hadn't realised either that the blog site automatically links every
>> article to the calendar! Does that explain the date displayed in red,
>> presumably?
> Yes.
>>> If you look at an individual page, like:
>>> http://www.lbvblog.org/?p=37
>> I've just clicked that link - result, another learning curve! I didn't
>> know that when an article is posted, and then as far as I know is
>> present on the HOME page, it actually exists on the site's server as a
>> separate page as well - in this case, ?p=37 I've just used !FTPc to
>> have a look at the server's contents - wow again! Loads of stuff.
> That's mostly all the control panels, editing dialogues and so on. There
> are a bunch of PHP pages that are which are mostly for control of the blog,
> while all the things that end lbvblog.org/?xyz=something are options for the
> main blog-displaying page (probably called something like index.php). All
> the latter are all different 'views' of the database generated from the same
> script.
You certainly know your stuff Theo! Yes there are loads of php pages
and yes again I can see a data (RISC OS file-typed anyway), file
called index.php
I doubt that I need to know too much about the other stuff I can see
there, but I certainly know who and where to ask if I do :-)
>> You are certainly opening my eyes Theo thank you.
>> Any further education regarding my replies above would be equally as
>> appreciated.
> A pleasure to be of service :)
> Theo
Best wishes,
--
Alex.
Kevin Wells
Alex Cessford <al...@cessford.org.uk> wrote:
>Yes, that does make sense. I guess I could set up a RSS feed from our
>council site too, (www.theparishcouncil.org), in the hope that it
>might encourage more folk to keep an eye on updates there if RSS was
>present to make that easier for them. I'll have to think about that.
>
The great thing about rss feeds it that it is possible to incorporate
them into web sites, as I have done on my software site, with the rss
feed from the software site's news blog,
<http://riscos.kevsoft.co.uk/>
--
Kev Wells http://riscos.kevsoft.co.uk/
http://kevsoft.co.uk/ http://kevsoft.co.uk/AleQuest/
ICQ 238580561
Among those dark satanic mills?
Alex Cessford
Kevin Wells <kevin...@talktalk.net> wrote:
> In message <461e7bd65...@cessford.org.uk>
> Alex Cessford <al...@cessford.org.uk> wrote:
>>Yes, that does make sense. I guess I could set up a RSS feed from our
>>council site too, (www.theparishcouncil.org), in the hope that it
>>might encourage more folk to keep an eye on updates there if RSS was
>>present to make that easier for them. I'll have to think about that.
>>
> The great thing about rss feeds it that it is possible to incorporate
> them into web sites, as I have done on my software site, with the rss
> feed from the software site's news blog,
> <http://riscos.kevsoft.co.uk/>
This is really kind of you Kevin. I must focus my thoughts on this now
and see if it will help on my council's site.
Best wishes,
--
Alex.