Well, it’s up an running. This site is live. Well, if you count a count a grand total of three visitors (Hello Sister Sharon, Friend Alex and Friend Clive – that is if you ever come back to read this).
I keep a log file for all the sites I run and for this site it gives the not very impressive visitor statistics of:
| General Web Traffic Statistics | (Figures in parentheses refer to the 7-day period ending 02-Dec-2004 21:23). | Notes on their meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Successful requests: | 519 (368) | number of files the server delivered. A file is each page and each image. So a single page request will often be 10 or so requests. Commonly called Hits. |
| Average successful requests per day: | 46 (52) | |
| Successful requests for pages: | 211 (159) | a.k.a it all worked from the servers point of view and a page was sent to the computer that requested it. |
| Average successful requests for pages per day: | 18 (22) | |
| Failed requests: | 91 (75) | Uh oh, this means it didn’t all work correctly. EG I didn’t put the correct image name in a file. Also gets counted here if you go to a page that doesn’t exist. I study the log files on sites to find the causes of these problems so I can fix them and hopefully keep this number at zero. |
| Distinct files requested: | 70 (61) | We know how many files had been requested by visitors, but this tells us how many files we have actually used on the server. In this case there were only 61 files on the server that were used, although several must have been sent more than once because 368 file requests were made by visitors. |
| Distinct hosts served: | 20 (20) | Distinct hosts means number of computers, but thats not the same as number of people. Actually, it isn’t really number of computers, its number of internet addresses that connected to the server and asked for a page. At the shop we only have one internet address but several computers, a clever box called a router sorts out where traffic is going to and from. Even though I used two computers at the shop the server would only see one host. 20 sounds like a lot right? Well the shop IP address stays the same, but at home (where I’ve created several pages) it changes every half day or so. That’s probably up to about 6 then. Add Sharon, Clive & Alex (I told them the site was here but they may not have come) then its about 9 hosts. Add the groups of servers that get told automatically when I update a page (built into the movabletype software so that people with weblogs can let each other know when a blog has been updated) and before you know it you’ve got 20 host visits but only 4 real people. |
| Data transferred: | 3.02 megabytes (1.99 megabytes) | If you think that an old floppy disk held 1.4megabytes, then this week the server sent out one and a bit. I pay for the amount of bandwidth the sites on my server use so I watch these numbers for all the sites on the server to make sure none of them are using too much. Too much? Well, the server currently sends around 3,500 old style floppy disks full of data every month to visitors, but has a basic capacity of sending about 22,000 disks per month. If you’re wondering what the real values are: 5GB usage, 30GB per month before I’m charged more. |
| Average data transferred per day: | 279.44 kilobytes (291.57 kilobytes) |
(I use a program called analog to analyse the log files in case you were interested)
Ho-hum, now theres some content worth looking at it must be time to submit to the search engines (say in a loud deep voice).
So tonight I’ve submited to:
- DMOZ – a directory site that needs a real person to verify the entry
- Yahoo Directory – a bit like DMOZ but it will probably take longer. Out of nostalgia I thought I’d list here first because it was the first site on the internet I ever went to… more on that another time. When I started the business it was easy to get listed although today business generally have to pay and the free submission have no guarantees of being listed. Still, nowdays most people use a search engine rather than a directory site (di’t’ave those when i were a boy on t’net).
- Google – a proper search engine that’s ever so popular. I’ll let you know how long before the first google spider comes visiting the site.
Oh well, that’s it for tonight, more ramblings later