Search results for: “label/Web%20Site%20-%20Design”

Besides managing Technically Easy, I also manage other web sites. These web sites were developed using Microsoft’s .Net framework and were coded in C#. Recently a problem had developed that caused me some grief.

In the test environment, the ASP.Net client-side validation controls (used on some web forms) worked perfectly. They highlighted the fields that weren’t filled in correctly when a visitor clicked the submit button. In production, however, they stopped working. After some serious research I determined the cause of the problem and was able to fix it. This post will explain how I did it.

(more…)

I have seen many posts in various forums regarding where to get Web site statistics. There are many statistics package that can be purchased and installed on a Web server, but many Web site authors are on a host that they don’t own.

The two most common online statistics packages available are Google Analytics and StatCounter. I have used both in the past and will be reviewing them in this post.

Google Analytics

Many people recommend this as their choice for keeping track of their Web site statistics. It provides a very detailed look at the visitors to your site, and is completely free to use.

The statistics are organized into different sections: Dashboard, Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals. With the exception of Dashboard, the remaining sections all have subsections that provide more detailed information.

The first view that is shown when accessing Google Analytics is that of the Dashboard. This page provides an overview of your Web site statistics over the past month. Items such as traffic, visitors, popular content and traffic sources are summarized on this page.

The next sections are summarized as follows:

• Visitors – This section provides an abundance of information about the visitors to your Web site. Information such as the number of new and returning visitors, maps, browser capabilities and network information can be found here. This information can be useful because it gives you an idea of the tools and connection speeds that your users are using when accessing your Web site.
• Traffic Sources – How are your visitors getting to your Web site? That question is answered in this section. Such things as referring Web sites, search engines and keywords searched by your visitors are shown here. This information can be helpful to optimize your site by review the keywords entered. Many bloggers create posts based on what keywords visitors used to get to their Web site.
• Content – If you would like to know the pages on your Web site that are the most popular, then you should have a look in this section. This section contains information on the pages that visitors first see when they visit your Web site, as well as the pages they leave your Web site from.
• Goals – If you have a business Web site then you can set metrics to measure how much your site fulfills its business objective. Goals measure the conversion rate of your Web site, such as when a client completes a purchase of a product from your Web site. Many Web site authors may not use this section.

I find Google Analytics provides very detailed information regarding visitors to my Web site. I do, however, have trouble tracking how a visitor moves through my site. There may be a way of doing this, but I don’t it very easy to do. Google Analytics also takes some time to update its statistics. From my experience, it can be several hours before you see the data.

Overall, I use Google analytics because of the information that it provides, especially for past data as it seems to keep a lot of historical data.

StatCounter

Along with Google Analytics, the other big player in the free Web site statistics package is StatCounter. I have only recently used their service, and found that they offer a really nice, detailed statistical information.

StatCounter doesn’t have as many different reports as Google Analytics does, but it does have very detailed reports. They do provide the same information as Google Analytics, such as entry and exit pages, keyword analysis, and visitor system information.

The one thing that I like about StatCounter is the ability to easily see how a visitor navigated through your site by viewing a Visitor Paths report.

I have a lot more experience with using Google Analytics, than with StatCounter (actually I just signed up StatCounter about a month ago), but I find myself using StatCounter just a much because the reports are easier to understand. They provide charts with several reports including the data in a tabular form below the chart.

The one thing about StatCounter that you should know is that it will only keep track of the last 500 page loads for the free account. You will need to upgrade to a paid account if you would like to track more. Once the log is full, the next page load will be recorded and the oldest data will be deleted. For many people, such as myself, 500 may be a large enough value. I believe the log file contains information about the visitors, as I have been able to pull up my site stats for a month ago.

Summary

Both statistics packages mentioned in this post are great for providing information about the visitors to your Web site. Each package has a different look and feel, but both provide a lot of information that could help you manage your Web site. I currently use both packages as each one provides information that the other does not. If you would like to choose one, then I suggest you try both and see which one you like best.

When I started Technically Easy the one thing that I wanted to do was make sure that my posts were printable. By this I mean I wanted the printed pages to not include the menubar and sidebars, only the content.

Those who are just starting out in Web development may just create a second copy of the current page, and then create a text link to this page for printing. I wanted a more simple solution and realized the same task can be done easily with CSS.

(more…)

A Web feed is used extensively on the Web especially for those who own a blog. They provide a means to distribute the contents of a Web site to subscribers. There are, however, two main types of feeds that can be used to send the sequentially and updated content from a Web site. This post will describe the two feed types and how someone can use them.

RSS

The RSS (Really Simple Syndication) (RSS 2.0) feed started out first as Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91), which then became RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90). All formats are specified using XML.

The first version of RSS was first used in March 1999 on the My Netscape portal and has since been modified by various people and corporations. This has led to some incompatibilities and issues between the various versions, which I won’t go into detail here.

Atom

The second popular type of Web feed is the Atom feed. Similar to RSS feeds, Atom feeds are also specified in XML. This type of feed was developed because of the many incompatible versions of RSS feeds.

The Atom feed has gone through two versions: 0.3 in December 2003 and 1.0 in December 2005.

Publication

Many blogs and other Web sites have the ability to publish both RSS and Atom feeds. When content on a Web site is updated, the publishers send out the feeds with the updated content in sequential order to their subscribers. This provides an automated method for the subscribers to read the new content from many different Web sites without actually visiting each one. This automated process is known as syndication.

Syndication

Imagine you enjoy reading the content on 20 different Web sites, and visit all 20 each day to read any updates. After a while you would probably be tired of visiting that many Web sites each day. With syndication you don’t have to because the content comes to you.

Syndication is the process of automatically receiving a Web feed (RSS or Atom) from a Web site. All you need is a news reader that would automatically check the Web sites that you choose for new content. In the case from above, the news reader will check 20 Web sites for updates. Only the updated content is downloaded, so if only 5 sites have updated their content, you will only receive content from those 5 sites.

Summary

With the advent of RSS and Atom Web feeds, the information from Web sites has never been easier to receive. You can automatically receive information from any Web site that provides a Web feed provided you have a reader. In turn, it also is easier for publishers to send updated content to their subscribers simply by converting that content into an RSS or Atom feed.