Why do People Visit My Website?

After a long period away from my blog, I was somewhat surprised to see a rather big jump in visits over the last three months. I wonder why my website gets more views now. WordPress says I get much more views than Google Analytics says. I like what WordPress says better.

Part of the discrepancy between WordPress and Google was that the Google script wasn't working. I fixed that, but Google still doesn't record as many visits. I wondered if WordPress was in error. Despite an increase in views, there was no increase in comments.

The pages viewed according to WordPress seemed reasonable. The top three pages (Home, Blog and Archive) remain the same.

There are a few long term favourites that are always in the top 20 pages viewed. Over the last few months, they have remained in the top 20.

• “2001: A Space Odyssey” and H. P. Lovecraft http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/2001-a-space-odyssey-and-h-p-lovecraft/
• “My Most Difficult Case” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-most-difficult-case/
• “Contingency” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/contingency/
• How Would Proportional Representation Change Canadian Politics? http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/how-would-proportional-representation-change-canadian-politics/
• Experiments With the Trial Version of nawmalMAKE http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/experiments-with-the-trial-version-of-nawmalmake/
• “The 89th Key” (my Doc Savage story) http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/
• “My Most Difficult Case” – Cast and Crew http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-most-difficult-case/my-most-difficult-case-cast-and-crew/

These pages and posts have been quite popular for some time, so it is no great surprise to see that they are still popular. “2001: A Space Odyssey” and H. P. Lovecraft have been popular topics elsewhere on the Internet for a long time. Proportional Representation, nawmalMAKE and Doc Savage have become popular topics recently. I don't really understand why the Cast and Crew page for “My Most Difficult Case” is popular.

A few of my older posts and pages have become more popular recently.

• “Make ’em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/make-em-squirm-the-sharkbiter-way/
• The History of the $100 Film Festival http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/the-history-of-the-100-film-festival/
• “The 89th Key” – ePub Version http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-epub-version/
• “Our Wedding Vow” http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/our-wedding-vow/
• “The 89th Key” – HTML Version http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-html-version/
• “My Next Film” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-next-film/

The $100 Dollar Film Festival recently celebrated its 25^th year, which is likely why my history of the festival would become more popular recently. The increased popularity of our wedding vow is linked to the recent death of my wife. I think about her often and our vow is very important to me.

I haven't posted much on my blog recently, but two of the posts did make it to the top 20.

• Back to Writing and Filmmaking http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/back-to-writing-and-filmmaking/
• Could Automation Replace the One Percent? http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/could-automation-replace-the-one-percent/

The popularity of my first post after my hiatus shows the kind of support I get from my friends and family. The fear of automation replacing people has become a hot topic recent, as has the one percent.

Over all, I don't see any clear reason why I had the increase of views on my website. There is no one post or page that stands out as drawing in more readers. Many of the same pages and posts remain at the top, but have gotten more views. The indications are that most of the visitors are not people who know me personally, so they wouldn't visit just to support me. While the relative popularity of some pages and posts can be explained for the most part, that doesn't explain why the number of views increased.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Website Infection Removed

I didn't get far on my projects this week. My wife's health, of course takes precedence over all other things. Besides that, I had to deal with a malware infection on my website.

Website

My website got infected with malware last week.

Nick Wernick, whom I know through my involvement with the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, warned me that WordPress had a bug that scammers had started to exploit. Unfortunately, my site had already been compromised.

The company who hosts my site, Netfirms, had detected the malware and shut down my site. I wasn't sure at first what I had to do, but their support team was helpful. All the same, it took me a couple days to get the site back up.

They do offer a service that protects your website from such attacks, but it is quite expensive. The mid level protection is about the same as I pay for hosting, while the top level is more than five times as much. The low level protection is cheaper, so I may go for that.

"Summer is Too Short"

I had hoped to work on "Summer is Too Short" this week, but didn't manage to get anything done. I did open up the Premiere Pro file and did a little fiddling around, but no real work. Hopefully I'll do better next week.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

My New Website Theme: As The Goals Change

I made some progress on the new WordPress theme for my website this week. I ran into a few snags, but got past some of them. I've changed my mind several times about what my goal was.

Changing Goals

While I over came many of the snags I ran into, I gave up on the search for solutions to the others. This caused me to rethink my goals several times.

At the start of the week I had planned to create a entirely new theme that incorporated a new look and support for mobile devices. As the week progressed, I saw that this was a difficult goal to meet.

I wanted to make the theme more flexible and dynamic. I decided that rather than trying to make everything flexible, I should just hard code the template files. It is a bit clunky to do it that way, but at least it works. I only really need to have a more flexible theme if other people want to use it, and I don't plan to do that.

I think I need to identify a series of versions that I want to do, so that I can start using what I've done. My new plan is:

• (release 1.80) Create a new theme that replicates the look of my current theme. In this theme I would keep the code simple and avoid any fancy dynamic features. In this theme I will include an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plug-in which isn't compatible with my existing SEO data.
• (release 1.90) Upgrade the new theme to be mobile device friendly.
• (release 2.00) Change the look of the theme.
• (release 2.01) Convert the old SEO data to work with the new SEO plug-in.
• (release 2.02) Upgrade the theme to make use of dynamic features.

Final Thought

Although I felt I make progress this week, and learned a few tricks, I'm not sure I can remember what I picked up if I want to go back and make more changes later.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Plans for Website Update

I have started to worked on changes to my website. I had a couple of goals. First to make the website more mobile friendly. Second to update the look of the website. I've made some progress.

I've had a website for my movies since 1999, and I haven't updated the look of my web page since 2009. Originally I used HTML for my site, then switched to PHP in 2009. I finally switched to WordPress in 2010.

In WordPress I tried a couple of themes (Kubrick and Core) before I decided to create my own theme. I tried to build one from scratch, but then decided to modify the Core theme. I didn't know about child themes at the time, so I just modified the original Core files. I added several special page types. I ended up with was a very rigid theme that is difficult to modify.

Over the last year or so I've read that more and more people access the internet through tablets and smart phones. Because the screen sizes are smaller, websites designed for a desk top don't look very nice on portable devices. My current theme is very hard to modify for different screen sizes.

Last week I installed a local server so I can experiment with different themes on my computer without making changes to my on-line website. I got it from a company called Bitnami (https://bitnami.com/stack/wordpress). It was quite easy to set up and work with I'm not sure how I can use it to test how the website will look on different devices though.

So far I have focussed on the technical aspects of a new theme design. I haven't given much thought as to what I want the theme to look like. I'll stick with my Dynamic Lethargy Films logo, but I'm not sure how I want the page laid out, or what color scheme to use.

My initial attempt was to create a child theme. I thought that would be easier to do, but after a little experimentation I decided to create a theme from scratch. I found a web page (http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/wordpress_create_theme.htm) that provided the code for a very basic theme. I used that as a starting point.

I've managed to create a theme that can handle my current page set up. It still needs a lot of work. Several times the theme wouldn't work when I make some changes to the templates. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I was able to go back to earlier versions that did work.

I plan to work in small steps toward a theme I'm happy with. I'm not in a big rush to get it done.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

The Scatter Shot Approach Doesn't Work for Me

In the past I've run into trouble when I try to do too many projects at the same time. I think I've fallen into that again. I need to pick one project to focus on.

"The Barrier"

I left "The Barrier" for now. I'll pick it up again when the new version of Xtranormal becomes available.

"My Most Difficult Case"

I started to work on "My Most Difficult Case" again. The files were very badly organized, so I tried to clean them up. To start I tried to get rid of duplicate files. I reduced the number of files from 42,109 to 21,789. I cut the number of folders from 716 to 265. The size of the files went from 324Gb to 187Gb.

There are still thousands of duplicates, but I'm not sure which I can get rid of. It also looks like I got rid of some files I should have kept. I generally hang on to all my intermediate files, so that it is easier to go back and fix mistakes. I got that habit when I worked in transportation planning. I think it is a good idea, but I need to document what I do better, so I can clean up the files later.

Triond and Wikinut

Some years ago I used to post articles on a couple of websites: Triond and Wikinut. I haven't posted new articles to either for a couple years now. I haven't had any payments from either of them for well over a year. I decided to cancel both accounts and repost my articles on my own site.

Wikinut doesn't seem to have a "close account" function. I found some discussion of that on some web posts. Someone said that they will close an account if you sent them a message and ask them to close the account. I sent a message, but they haven't responded yet.

There seems to be some problem with Triond. I can't log in at all. I did a search and found that people have been complaining about problems with Triond since July. I will try again later.

I'll likely wait for a while after I close these accounts before I start to report my articles on my website. I'd like to revise some of them. There are also a few that I think I just want to get rid of.

Website

I want to do some work on my website. In particular I want to set it up to be more iPhone/iPad friendly. I use WordPress for my website and use a theme that I created from another theme. It is a bit clunky and I can't see how I could easily modify it to be iPhone/iPad friendly.

I looked at some other themes, but I would need to make some major changes to any I choose. The last time I did a major revision, I set up an alternate website to test the new theme. I found that awkward to work with.

I wanted to see if it was possible to set up a site on my local computer and do the experimenting there. I found a couple of systems that seem to do the job: https://bitnami.com/stack/wordpress/installer and XAMPP https://www.apachefriends.org. I don't know much about either, so it is hard to decide.

Pick a Project

I think that I really need to get "My Most Difficult Case" over and done with. On the other hand I really want to redo my website. Maybe it will be easier to choose when I get up Monday morning.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Website Upgrades in the Works

I want to improve my website and have started to experiment with some changes.

My first improvement was to add an e-mail notification to my blog. Google’s Feedburner allows you to sign up for notifications every time there is an update to the blog. I tried it out myself and it works just fine. Now I need to get people to sign up for it. I already have an e-mail list to send out notifications, but I promised to send out notices no more than once a month. The notices from this will be more frequent.

Up until now, I have created my website with html and php files that I coded myself. I did add WordPress when I added my blog. More recently, I looked into content management systems, which would make it easier for me to maintain the website. I could add features, like comments, which I can’t do very well now.

I hadn’t found any systems I felt comfortable with, and then someone suggested I could use WordPress. Since I use it for my blog, I have a reasonably good idea how it works. I set up a test website a couple weeks back to experiment with. (http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/testsite/ )

In order to match the look of my current website I need to create my own theme. That has been a challenge. I’ve run into and solved several problems so far. I got a WordPress for Dummies book, and while I found it useful, it doesn’t have a whole lot on how to create new themes, especially with the features I want to include.

I still need to fix a few bugs yet and I want to add in all of the pages before I take the new site live.

I sometimes wonder if I put too much time into improving my website. Maybe I should put that time into my stories or films instead. On the other hand, I think that a professional looking website does help. So far, I don’t have huge numbers of people who visit my site, so I feel I have the time to experiment with the site itself and with what I put on it.

Besides, I enjoy setting up ad improving the website.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog