Posts tagged Meta

The Accidental Tourist

Nov 27th

Usually, I have a good idea why people come to this site.

I use the free Sitemeter tool to track hits, and as I generally have low traffic and no ads, that’s decent enough for me.

Sitemeter tracks the last 100 visitors, and let’s me know (among other things) the page they hit, how long they stayed, what site they were on when they clicked over, what operating system, which city — a treasure trove of information.

(For instance, a lot of my traffic comes from search engines, so I can tell when people are looking for “Chocolate Covered Cockroaches” and coming to my site.)

In the last week or so, I have seen a lot of traffic from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And in the last couple of days, a similar spike from Tema, Ghana.

A couple of years ago, the spike in Saudi traffic was almost entirely centered on my “Live Nude Girls” post, but in this current wave I have no clue. The Riyadh and Tema visits are clean, no trace of the info.

It’s quite possible those are just compromised proxies, and I am being auto-scanned for vulnerabilities by overseas hackers. And, with that in mind, time to boost my security settings…

That’s why it pays to pay attention to these sorts of things.

Getting Around, hacking, Meta, security

Shaking things up

Oct 7th

Posted by Ike in [...]

8 comments

It was time for a new look.

I liked the old look, but there was something about the old “old look” that was missing.

Yet, the “old” old look lacked several features.

This look will get some tweaking in the meantime.

Meta, Wordpress

Is it time to close the barn doors?

Jul 23rd

Posted by Ike in Personal

10 comments

Honestly, it’s a question that doesn’t get asked enough.

“Is it time to shut down this site?”

I’m not so much concerned about content and direction for my writing; indeed, I am happy contributing within niches elsewhere. It’s my question about the format itself.

I write, I share, I communicate through several media now. I do pithy video at 12seconds.tv, I’m playing around with Meedeor as a change of pace for short takes on photos, I have a thriving Facebook tribe and Twitter is always as interesting as you dare to make it.

The thing I haven’t experienced yet are the spammers who want to use me as a vehicle for goosing their link rank.

In the past, the spammer’s best tool was a ‘bot – a piece of code that checked sites for certain hooks, then tried to place a comment that linked back to a site they wanted to promote. Because these were automated, they were clunky and easily punted.

But lately, I am getting comments that are on-topic and show that an actual human being read them for context – yet they are very spammy. The sites at the end of the chain are of no value to anyone.

I enjoy this platform because it invites an eclectic audience. I enjoy this platform because it allows me to experiment with different forms of communication such as the Venns, the My Quotes, and other recent attempts at merging content with layout.

I used to enjoy this platform because of the conversations that would develop in the comments – the connections to real people with real interests. I don’t enjoy it so much now because the weeds are overtaking the lawn. I want real communication, not a well-placed comment from someone who doesn’t care about the subject and only wants link-rank.

So… I’ll be thinking about this for a while.

I’ll let you know where to find me.

Back in Business – almost

Jun 14th

Posted by Ike in [...]

2 comments

The issue here was a plugin, one that tries to minimize the load on servers by relying on Javascript libraries housed at Google.

The “Use Google Libraries” plugin needed updating, and that new version arrived tonight.

We will return you soon to pithy quotes and unusual perspectives. (Provided you have a computer monitor compatible with the new Digital Occam signal from this past weekend’s transition…)

Update: My Text widgets in the sidebar are gone.

I used multiple instances for showing feedburner stats and other things of interest. They also stored my analytics codes, so I am rather blind at this point as to who exactly is visiting me.

Fortunately, not all of my sidebar text was in standard Text widgets. I am a big fan of the Ad Rotator plugin, which is essentially a text widget with a randomization function built in. (That’s how, for instance, you see different endorsements from people each time you refresh the browser.)

So, not all is lost. But a lot is. For now.

Anyone else have a solution? And WordPress people out there also missing their Text Widgets after the jump to 2.8?

Meta, Wordpress