Category Archives: Blogging

Using WordPress via iPhone

October 14, 2009Blogging, Hardware, SoftwareAlistair Lattimore

I wanted to install the WordPress iPhone application, however since I couldn’t get my Apple iTunes Store Account to verify and work correctly – I’ve resorted to using WordPress via Safari.

While I have viewed plenty of blogs using a mobile device and was surprised how functional they were, I’d never attempted to use the WordPress administration area. When visiting the WordPress admin with an iPhone or another internet enabled mobile device, you are served the exact same version of the administration interface that you’d receive if you viewed it using a desktop computer. That might surprise a lot of people, however WordPress isn’t mobile device ready by default – you require a plugin such as WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King. Even with that plugin enabled, it generates a mobile friendly reader experience and doesn’t provide a mobile friendly administration interface.

To my surprise however, it was quite a simple task to navigation around the WordPress administration area using Safari on the iPhone. Thanks to the convenient zooming functionality that the iPhone provides, it makes working with busier sections of the interface straight forward. While functional, it certainly isn’t the kind of user experience that you’d want to use daily – as a good amount of screen real estate is wasted and when you’re using a small screen device – every pixel counts.

As I tested out different sections of the interface, about the only thing that I noticed didn’t work ‘as expected’ was the text area used to write a blog post. By default, I enable the visual or rich editor in WordPress. Normally when you give focus to any form element that you can type into, the iPhone automatically pops up the keyboard. However, because the visual editor is a JavaScript implementation – nothing triggers the keyboard to show up. Of course, selecting the ‘HTML’ tab on the blog posting page fixes that immediately.

All and all, very impressed with how the iPhone handles complex interfaces – it certainly gives me a lot of confidence that there’d be a limited number of sites that I’d have problems with using Safari on the iPhone.

Windows Live Messenger Upgrade

April 4, 2009Blogging, SoftwareAlistair Lattimore

Microsoft recently released an upgrade for Windows Live Messenger. I’ve been meaning to upgrade for a while now, however had heard a few negative comments about it which stopped me from upgrading. This evening I took the plunge, upgraded and so far I’m quite enjoying it.

I haven’t changed any settings away from the default and in liking that:

the contact list font size is slightly smaller, so you can see more people in the same vertical space
grouping contacts isn’t new, however the Favourites might be?
the annoying left hand wall of advertising and other useless services has been moved down the bottom
hovering a contact provides a context menu with a few useful options such as send email or view profile
What’s New scrolls through the recent activity of your contact list. Within the settings area, you can choose who you want to see events from, what type and also what you publish (if anything at all). It’s a great way to see at a glance what your contacts have been doing, in case you missed something.

I’m not that interested in the scene (read: themes), animated display pictures or signature sounds functionality but maybe that’ll change in the future. While I’ve only had it installed for a very brief amount of time, I think it is a positive upgrade from Microsoft for Live Messenger.

2008 Traffic Statistics

March 25, 2009BloggingAlistair Lattimore

Following on from my 2007 web statistics, below is a summary of what the site saw in 2008.

In 2006 the site had about 95,000 visitors come to the site, which grew in 2007 to around 145,000. With the change in blogging habits through 2008, coupled with the fact that I moved my future technical posts onto a different domain – the site had a slight decline and only saw 134,921 visits over the year. The roughly 135,000 visits generated 176,206 page views which is slightly less page impressions per user compared to last year.

The spike in visits towards the end of May was driven by a burst of interest in zorbing from the United States. It was spread across the different states, however New York drove the most interest for the fun adventure activity. The significant decline toward the end of the year was, not surprisingly driven by a decline in search traffic from Google. There was no single set of search phrases that declined, everything dropped pretty much across the board. The only thing I can attribute it to was that I changed my web hosting midway through November. I was still with the same web host, however the specific web server was different – which hadn’t been changed in a number of years. Fortunately, the search traffic from Google began to recover in January 2009 but it still has some ground to make up yet.

The traffic breakdown for 2008 still reflects the complete dominance that Google holds in the web search space. In 2006, Yahoo! was the first non-Google search engine to show its face at position #11 which improved to five in 2007. Yahoo! have improved their traffic driving potential in 2008 and now sit at position four. Without checking the numbers, it looks as though Yahoo! made it into position four simply because Google Image Search within Australia declined a little. However, in 2007 Yahoo! drove about 1.6% of the traffic of Google web search, which has increased in 2008 to about 2.5%. Great to see such a strong percentage increase for Yahoo!, however they still aren’t competing in web search within Australia.

The most popular posts for the year looks similar to 2006 & 2007, however with a single newcomer:

Given that the same or similar posts have shown up as the most viewed for three years running, it would seem a reasonable assumption that they will again in 2009 unless I start writing about different topics. With that in mind, following is a revised top five list excluding the repeat above:

Removing the heavy hitters certainly changes the landscape, now I just have to wait another nine months to see what the rest of 2009 is going to bring.

2007 Traffic Statistics

February 25, 2009Blogging, WebsitesAlistair Lattimore

Following on from my 2006 web statistics, below is a summary of what the site saw in 2007.

I was pretty happy in 2006 to see approximately 95,000 visitors come through the site in six months however in 2007 I wasn’t able to sustain that level of traffic. By the end of the year the site was visited 146,075 times which resulted in 206,898 pageviews.

The breakdown of traffic sources over 2007 still highlights the complete dominance that Google held in web search. However, unlike in 2006 where the first non-Google search product came in at 11th position – Yahoo! made a showing at position five. It’d be nice to think that meant that Yahoo! was actually competing against Google but when they are sending this site less than 2% of Google web search – it feels like a one horse race.

The most popular posts for the year looks similar to 2006, however with a few newcomers:

I wonder what posts will make it into the top list in 2008, I think we’ll see some familiar faces since there are already repeat offenders from 2006.

2006 Traffic Statistics

February 14, 2009Blogging, WebsitesAlistair Lattimore

At the end of 2008, I mentioned that I was going to publish some of this sites web statistics. It took a little longer to find the energy and time to put it together and without further ado, my web statistics for 2006.

I only installed Google Analytics on the site half way through July 2006. I was happy to see my traffic going up at that point, until I found out the hard way that being popular online has a cost associated to it. Over the roughly half year reporting period, 95010 visitors came to the site which resulted in 139687 pageviews.

The breakdown of the different traffic sources to the site over that window paints quite a scary picture of the search engine competitiveness, even back in 2006:

As you can see, the first non-Google search engine comes in at position 11 and they are delivering about 3% of the traffic of Google web search. If I include all Google sources, such as Google Image Search – the Google network of sites is providing a whopping 89% of all traffic to the site.

The most popular posts for the year were:

What do your web statistics look like?