Comments on: An article about AWS on Reality Sandwich

By: JohnC

JohnC — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 04:24:59 +0000

Thanks for the info Mikey. Always nice to learn something! I had no idea visitors was different from hits.

By: mickey

mickey — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:32:24 +0000

Some of the terms used for this kind of thing:

VISITOR - You visit the site, view as much content as you want, and it counts as one visit.
PAGEVIEW - You visit the site, and each page you click on counts as one pageview.
HIT - You visit the site, and every file loaded generates a hit on the server. On our homepage, that’s probably at least 10-15 hits (main file, included CSS, header image, RSS icon image, reality sandwich graphic, senator shelby graphic, etc).

To use yesterday as an example:
Visits - 1,113
Pageviews - 5,051
Hits - 11,586

I could say “We had over 11,000 hits yesterday!”, but while it’s 100% accurate, it’d really be pretty misleading.

By: ST

ST — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:17:31 +0000

Also, to readers of this blog: I’m trying to spread the word about this article, so if any of you use services like Digg or Delicious, could you follow the links at the bottom of the article text and add your vote? Many thanks…

I’d also encourage you to sign up to Reality Sandwich if you would like to add to the discussion there. It’s an exciting website and a positive, forward-thinking community in its own right — always looking for new readers!

-st

By: ST

ST — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:08:50 +0000

Just curious: what is the technical difference between visitors and “hits”? (also, I realize “unique visitors” is a qualifying term…)

-st

By: mickey

mickey — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 01:25:20 +0000

Let me clarify the stats first. It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when people say “hits”. From a technical standpoints, “hits” are a useless metric. If a website tries to excite you with their hits, you know they’re blowing smoke.

The article correctly identified the daily numbers as visitors. We tend to average between 1000-1500 visitors a day, with peaks of around 7000/day if we get mentioned in a major publication. Things have slowed down a bit recently, probably due to the holidays. I expect traffic to start picking back up in January when people get back home and realize what’s going on.

It’s pretty exciting!

By: JohnC

JohnC — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:26:02 +0000

Congratulations on the website, Mickey! I wasn’t sure who was writing the articles.

My goodness, 1500 hits a day! Yikes! I thought it was just 8 or 9 of us.

You too rkolter! I didn’t realize you formulated the drought chart. Well done!

The other John (the good John, hehe) did call the dam, but I also posted links that claimed the ACE said the dead pool was drinkable. So maybe that helped clear up some misinformation.

You all have a nice holiday!

By: Jay Randal

Jay Randal — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:28:07 +0000

ST > thanks for posting that link. Next 4 months is critical to determine if the drought eases or gets far worse. At present it appears it will get worse.

By: ST

ST — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:53:42 +0000

Hey Jay: check out this story from David Stooksbury:
http://georgiafaces.caes.uga.edu/storypage.cfm?storyid=3299

12/21/07

New year will bring same old drought.

Athens, Ga. – If Georgia doesn’t receive adequate rainfall over the next three to four months, drought conditions in summer and fall next year will likely be worse than those in 2007.

By: Jay Randal

Jay Randal — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:38:29 +0000

I just read an AJC newspaper article that claims that property values are going up on Lake Lanier, and new housing development too, so we are all supposed to go back to sleep and believe the drought does not exist.

By: Jay Randal

Jay Randal — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:59:12 +0000

Glad I was not mentioned in the article > lol.