Blackdirt Blog

I have been using Charbeat and Google Analytics for quite a while now an have only recently really started to look at Google’s Real-Time features.  Yes, sure they are still in beta, but what at Google isn’t in beta.  Today on one of the sites I work on we had a slashdot effect link [take your normal day's traffic, multiply by 1000 and condense into an hour] and I was monitoring both Chartbeat and Google at the same time.  For the first hour there was no comparison – we had exceeded our account size and only Google was showing me ‘true’ numbers.

Judging by the bandwidth we were using – Google’s numbers seemed somewhat close to what I would expect and somewhat lower than what Business would like or expect  - but I was happy with it.  Then traffic started dropping – and the difference really began to grow.  Chartbeat was reporting 2.5x the number that Google was – well that was depressing and somewhat scary.

We have been basing a lot on what Chartbeat has been reporting to us for some months.  Whether or not we should spin up some new servers, to increase caching times – whether or not it was a good time to remove a server from rotation for an upgrade or maintenance work – a basic graph of activity on the site currently.  Of course this would be backed up by some other stats from some other more precise method of measurement, but it is usually where we started since it was easy to get from a mobile device or bookmark.

In the past it had always bothered me on how Chartbeat would report XX,XXX numbers of users on the site, but the hardware was telling me otherwise.  This site is not a 2 seconds on and gone sort of site.  There is a lot of content to absorb as a user [if we catch you in the first 2 seconds], but at times the difference was so great that I honestly questioned the value of the product [yes, I have a bit of a one-track mind at times].

Today I found this: http://chartbeat.com/infographics/measure-differently

This changed my whole perspective.  Yes Chartbeat is very important and very useful, but as a ‘techie’ kind of guy I am really more concerned with the ‘action’ going on my server.  Once I have delivered the page to the user and that stress is off my server I don’t really care if they spend 10 minutes reading the page – I have 1,000 more pages to deliver!

Google is providing me with numbers concerning the ‘action’ on my servers vs Chartbeat’s ‘action’ on the site.  Both provide valuable data [although I question the real accuracy of both], they are geared in two slightly different directions – and I really see a need for both.   So Business can see their 10,000 ‘current visitors’ and I can see my 6,000, it is the second number I care about in the moment and I will leave the other to the Ad Sales department.

If you are not familiar with xkcd, I suggest that you run over there right now and spend the rest of your day going through the archives.  Some of the funniest, geeky cartoons can be found there – and it is updated frequently.

Apache Server overload – sometimes it feels like I spend half my working week dealing with this issue.  Mockyblog has written up a handy little summary of  how to approach this issue on small Linux servers.  I think following Alex’s steps as a first line of fire in these situations would be very good advice.  The article will also teach you some pretty basic lines of attack and methods of determining what exactly is going on with your server.  I have used most of his suggestions in the past, but the post did teach me a couple things that I did not know before.

I would say this is must reading for those just getting started in the hosting world.

Code Standards, something I am really missing in my current position.  At the moment everything is about speed, speed, speed.  Deployment now, or forever hold you peace!

Okay, maybe it is not that bad, but there is definitely some room for improvement.  One of our biggest tasks at the moment is maintaining legacy code and in this code there very little use of ‘standards’ and it is really killing our production time.

I will sending this link to all of our departments.  Please read Isobar’s Code Standards & Front-End Development Standards – and carry the message forward!

This looks very interesting – automatically converting Flash animations to HTML5 compliant code.  This would save me a ton of work, or from omitting content, because it is based in Flash.

I don’t know why, but this seems like it would be pretty interesting to have. I have downloaded it and I am looking forward to playing with it.

Have a look and let me know what you think. Get it at Addy Osmani’s Blog.

Thanks to @smashingmag for the tweet!

Smokescreen (preview) is an open source solution to the Flash question.  I am no fan of Flash, never have been, but I am also a text only email kind of guy, so take that with a grain of salt.

So in this fight between Apple and Adobe I tend to fall on the Apple side, but only to a point.  There is real value in using Flash for certain functionality and/or look and feel.  What I really don’t like is locking Flash out from all sorts of popular devices.  It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t like any company to have that much power over another.

As an iPhone user [maybe iPad some day],  I really do not like being locked out from sites that utilize Flash, whatever the reason might be.   There is nothing worse than being greeted by that little blue cube when I am looking for information on a site.

Then there is advertising – a lot of ads are delivered using Flash and as someone who works with companies where a dominant portion of their revenue comes from online ads [and thus my paycheck] I get a little irked knowing that the little blue cube at the top is lost revenue.

The couple of demos I sat through seemed a little slow and it looks like there might be a few browser issues that need to be worked out, but it does look promising.  I would seriously consider looking into this if your site uses flash for any ‘mission critical’ tasks as navigation or call to action.  It would be a lot cheaper than rebuilding your entire site.