Acorn Heroes

My long suffering wife knows that I get addicted to things easily.  In the past there’s been Magic the Gathering, numerous computer games, war games of one sort or another, certain authors, watching my auctions on Trademe and all sorts of other things.  I’ve managed to avoid World of Warcrackft so far but it may only be a matter of time.

So it’s no surprise that there’s a new contender for my time.  Although what it is may seem a bit odd.  I was recently reading Cliffski’s blog and came across a piece he wrote about Google Analytics. Finding out what was possible was a pleasant revelation.

In short order I’d signed up on the main page, dropped the relevant script onto our site.  A tip for WordPress users, log in as admin, add a new Text Widget and put the script in there – simple.  Then came the hard part – waiting for up to a day to know that it’s all working properly.

The depth of information available is astounding.  The fact that we actually had people visit our site was comforting!  But beyond that we can see how visitors came to our site, roughly where they came from, what pages on the site they spend time reading and a whole heap more.  I’m hooked.  There’s no need to check the data several times a day, but it obviously tickles the nerd centre of my brain in a good way, so I check in regularly.  

After a week there’s not enough evidence to draw any real conclusions, but here’s a few interesting snippets:

• We’ve had 48 unique visitors.  When we hit 100 I might make a cake to celebrate.
• Those people typically view a couple of pages, of which my font rendering post is a clear favourite.
• Hello to the USA, Australia, UK, India, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Singapore and South Korea!
• There’s a reasonably even split between people arriving directly, finding us via a search engine or being referred from another site.

The main thing that has stood out for me is that the technical posts are the most popular, so I will endeavour to get more out as soon as I can.  Current candidates are articles about texture atlases and  particle systems.

On that note, I can say that the particle system I’m working on is coming along slowly but well, stay tuned I’ll post more details,screen shots and code when there’s enough to be of interest.

Related posts:

1. First GDD gathering a success