Friday april 11, 2008

hi everyone, despite earlier rumors (okay, not rumors because i wrote it myself) i'm not continuing the stimuluresponse statistics service.
Though i loved working on this, my former decision was mostly based on friends who wanted to keep using it, but...
I simply can't find the time and every time I start again it feels more like an obligation than something I enjoy.
Instead I'll be focussing more on short term and less maintenance heavy projects (next to my 40 hour [and then some] a week job).
So this is it.
I won't shut down the site. once the last person goes, the lights go off. untill then enjoy.
But no more new accounts, updates etc.
I hope you enjoyed the ride. I know i have.
yours,

j. [whom also can be found here]


Well that kind of sucked, didn't it?
months gone by, just some silent trouble shooting and that's it.
After some deliberation, doubt over if i should continue this
i've started last week to completely rebuild stimulusresponse.
Sometimes it's just better to start from scratch, which means version 3 is upcoming.
I just started, so don't get your impatient hopes up, but it's looking solid.
untill then you can follow me here.
once again.

j.


And on month later and probably alot of news, but I haven't been really in the writing mood.
I'm working on alot of new stuff and updating some old, the color browser is a very very
early preview of things to come, watch this space in time to come.

j.


Still working here! because 10 000 visitors to determine an average for a lot of items made opening the pages really (really!) slow,
i decide to bring it back to 1000 for the time being (unless you have more in 1 day) you can still see all past visitors up to 10 000,
but to at least keep everything running nice and smooth until i'm done with the next round of optimisation it's just this : (
I'm trying out some other stuff, but don't worry, I'm strictly separating writing to the logs and viewing the logs, so just because
i'm down for some time for viewing, we're still logging your visitors.
j.

update: i changed some server settings : ) urls look better, you might want to change your bookmarks.

j2.

update 2: still working on it, not completely nice yet, but wait an hour or so .....

update 3: okay i can live with the fact your bookmarks might not be optimal anymore (whatfor would you be reading the news for anyway) but it hink
all the current update are in to place.
Thank god (pun intended) for a long easter weekend in which everything can be tested extensively.
If you've still got problems with the new setup by tuesday just drop me a line.
Working on some more stuff

j.


Though still marked 'under construction' the location aspect has vastly improved.
Thougn not as visual as i'd like it to be (without going the obvious way by using google maps, cause that's just plain ugly),
it's working much better, how's that for a first week back!
j.


And it's 4 working days a week !
which means I'm doing some maintenance tonight and tomorrow,
don't worry if things might not workout immediately it's a two day intensive "better late than never" deal.
j.


Short note during the silent period before i can get going here again.
petra hart from hartworld pointed out a new upgrade for blogspot, for which my code didn't validate.
though i know all code should validate, i know i know, javascript and xml are a bit looser in most browsers than when strictly working with it.
All things considered, it sucks when your stats screw up your much wanted upgrade of your blogspot hide-out, therefor, if in need
i updated some code in the documentation section. enjoy !
see you soon,

j.

Well and another month has passed...
no work done, but on days like today and yesterday I'm really glad i spend all that time working on optimizing the site.
Ellen from zeepvrij gave me a great run for performance-testing with huge amounts of visitors.
Another bit of good news is I'll start working 4 days a week on my day job (instead of 5) starting april, which means the promissed goodies will probably start rolling in around that time of year!

j.

Monday februari 5, 2007

hey everyone,

sorry for all the delays, but overtime is killing.
The regular job is keeping me busy enough as is and i've got some other job which is keeping me occupied on weekends.
Even the cool new features will have to wait, but first after i'm done with all the fun activities I'll start optimizing again before implementing all the new cool stuff,
I'll keep you all up to date.

j.

Wednesday januari 24, 2007

It's been some time since i've written a news item.
Work is slow, but it's special a special upcoming new feature.
I can imagine not everybody liking or needing it, but it's quite a nice expansion.
It's alot of work but almost done that said, i'll keep you in suspension for now.
just keeping you posted,

j.

Saturday januari 7, 2007

A small note after a long day.
Once again some changes, but though not all of them might (for now) be as visually pleasing as i'd like I feel the responsiveness and loadtimes of the general statistics pages have drastically increased.
Documentation has been added to the new functionality so check out the "documentation" and added the option to "reset" your account to your the account settings, but be careful this one, i haven't added an "are you sure"-prompt yet, so all you current logs will immediately be deleted.
yours,

j.

Wednesday januari 3, 2007

latest news!!!!
actually there's not that much. I'd like to wish everybody the best and most for 2007 but for now I'm just tired from a great new years' in London.
I spend a couple of days there to, mostly, see some galleries and visit too many shoe-stores with my wife.
Update for now: took the rest of the week of work to do some updates.
I'll try to make the sign-up form a bit more clear when it comes to error checking (which doesn't matter for the people with an account), but also improving the performance of your main statistics pages.
Because I spend so much time expanding loading times for this page (and the tabs) have increased exponantially which I'm currently bringing down, so expect an update in this department tomorrow or the day after.
I didn't win anything from the huuuuuuuuge hosting contest, but the promised "save-a-puppy-make-a-donation"-banner is right there on the right side of your screen.
Use it and enjoy,

yours,

j.

Saturday december 23, 2006

You can count your blessings I do more development than take time to describe or brag about it in the news item, because three weeks have passed an though this is the first news item in ages I've been busy enough building stuff.
Weekly and monthly reports have shown up out of the blue and, before i forget, everyone's been upgraded to 10.000 visitor details logged!
As everyone who has actually reads stuff, beside their own statistics, on the site knows (which means no one) normal accounts saved detailed information for the last 10.000 visitors, For a small fee this number was upgraded to 10.000.
During some contemplation building some new features I was wondering if I should make these paid only features, but somehow this felt petty.
It's not as if there are that many paying users and I'd still like everyone to actually enjoy (or get get annoyed with) new stuff that's build, and therefor from now on....no more payed service everyone's upgraded and all future upgrades are free.
In return I'll probably put a annoying "make a donation" graphic on the site somewhere in the future.
Besides the, already mentioned, new graphics I made the private settings really private and with the help from Frans made some improvements in relation to older browsers.
Currently I'm working on more detailed plug-in info and some decent documentation on the, undocumented, extra features in relation to support for javascript and flash action tracking and outgoing links tracking mentioned earlier.
Oh and i forgot the visual changes, apparantly it's allmost to much to remember.
Let's end with wishing everyone happy holidays and a reminder to click on the really really big banner on your right to both support my great host Servage Hosting and increases my changes in their Christmas Lottery.

j.


The holidays are coming up, really soon when you live in the netherlands, and Servage Hosting,my reliable, lovable, huggable webhost, is having a special end-of-the year event.
For every unique visitor from my site to theirs I receive a lot and have a chance to win a month free webhosting or 5000 (yes 5000!!!!) euros, which i, ofcourse, would happily receive.
So everybody make me a happy developer and click the huuuuuge banner in the sidebar or the links to
Servage Hosting in this newsitem to increase my chances of being a very very happy boy next year.
To be mucho crystal clear, chances are increased by unique visits not sales, so even if you're not interested you're doing me a huge favour by just clicking it, even if you're not interest in purchase.

j.


Another day, another feature.
It's been some time, and freelance work is not over yet, but decided to spend some time tonight to do some work. For everybody who's signed-up....the support function works.
It's a small-scale support-ticket system, i'll expand it some more during the weeks, but essentially it works.
enjoy

j.


As promised here is the shameless promotion of uw algemeenbelang
a website "for the people by the people" leading up to dutch elections and an event in "de Balie" next weekend for gelijk.org.
I urge you all to check it out and contribute, even if you can't read it.
j.


Since it's more than a week since the last news, I thought i'd drop everybody a note I'm still here, but working on
completely different stuff right now. Next to working overtime, i'm currently working on a project for a friend leading
up to the dutch elections november 22nd which will pay for........(feel the excitement).......the geo-data.
So if you feel neglected in friendly news or new features, well...you should have donated and I could have bought it
right away. Untill I'm done, just wait for the shameless plugs, in dutch, for a friends great project due somewhere this week.
yours,

j.


Some small changes in the layout are signs to some other upcoming features.
if you want a sneak preview, change the reference to stats.js to sr.js
and use the functions srAction and sroutgoing (like this sroutgoing('www.koert.com')) on
your links to check which links people are clicking or use sraction('with a description of the action')
to use for you ajax or flash interaction.
It's not working perfectly yet so use is your own responsiblity, but
it's something which is definitely coming real soon for real.

j.

ps. anxious to know if the ugly color is gone for all the right reasons?
(don't know what i'm talking about click on "more news")
the answer is no !
so don't forget the click i love... in the sidebar and show your
appreciation and interest in even more stuff you allways wanted to know
about your visitors but were afraid to ask.



As some of you might have seen some of your visitor details currently show the country of origin.
This is a test for a, payed, database download demo.
As it's currently around 3 years old not every ip to address is available, but current results are
really good to work with and therefor......IT'S A BEG-A-THON!!!
Because a one-time purchase costs around $100,- , and cashflow is low due to paying my isp, I'm asking you (yes, you!) to contribute to an even better experience.
click the link I LOVE... in the navigation bar.
and show the love (and get a country, region and city indication for every visitor and more....much more!);

...and after i raise the money, ugly color goes away!!

As you might 've seen in your stats the server was down for some time this morning
and because servage guarantees 99,98% uptime, we'll be up for quite some time in the future.
Still working on the log-in sessions.
'nuff said

j.



For those people who actually read the news, I'm currently working on one of the biggest frustrations so far (no not the timezones)...the untill now superfluous "keep me logged in" form element.
As many have noticed and commented on this special visual element does absolutely nothing.
One of the benefits of working on a framework is that a lot of work is done for you and makes development much faster (as ofcourse everyone has noticed),
but the one downside i've experienced so far is trying to achieve some things not facilitated while trying to keep within the boundaries of given framework.
You might think hack and slash scripting might be a good idea hear, but last version of the site taught me otherwise.
For everyone who doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about a short summary:

I'm working on the keep me logged in element. (don't forget the widget, click on more news to read what that's about).




Short note, took some time this weekend to find out what the whole dashboard widget for osx was all about
and decided to just build one to find out.
Beside all the crappy, but fun results, i offer for your approval (and for mac osx 10.3 &up users)
the stimulusResponse dashboard widget 0.1.



download it here

j.



well the highest average time spent -table just gave me an incredible headache and eventually didn't work so
for the next week i decided to work on some smaller aspects. some polishing.
if anyone knows how to simulate a decent word-wrap:breakword css fix for firefox....you know where to reach me.

j.



Once again working on some new features this weekend.
Some pages on the stimulusresponse server might look different,
or plan wrong, during this period.
(As far as i can tell the the amount of time spent on your page is currently logged correctly the average time spend table is not yet how i want it work).

j.



Paying the bills.
As the end of the year approaches this can only mean one thing...
it's time to pay the hosting bill !
To celebrate this joyous time of the year we've taken some time off from developing new and special features especially for you to facilitate some advertising on this site. You can check it for yourselves how beautiful your ad would look and enjoy the ease of paypal when you decide to actually purchase one of the special places reserved especially for you! (oh joy!).

j.



I've added some charts (and probably broke something and fixed something) today.
A decent legend will follow, buy the short explanation for now is:
different shades of gray are the top 5, green is the rest.
If that doesn't sound like a great tip for autumn fashion I don't know what is.

j.



even more news!
I found some spare time today to start working on some new info.
It's not really new, but for the people who use the site check how people navigate their site we're implementing an "average pages viewed tdoay" and show it next to the other info. The first part is already there, but not really tested yet, so don't throw a fit if it's not what you expected.

j.



oh My, that was an interesting week.
Right after the move we lost our we found out we didn't actually correctly move everyone AND we lost our internet connection, thus fun all around!
Thanks to Gideon from www.nwsgr.nl/ for pointing out the error of our ways.
As a special treat this weekend (And I think I'll have to point it out to all the people who never log-in to view their own site) we've added
two tables in which you can check which pages of your site are most used for site entry and which pages of your site are usually the last ones
seen before people to decide to do something else.
Because this might show things about your site you might not want anyone else to see it's been decided to put this after the log-in.
Anyone feeling different about this...let me know (email address is in the sidebar).

j.



Well here it is.
read me I'M NEWS AND CLICK THE MORE NEWS BUTTON BELOW
A slightly different look, but a completely new workflow.
Though at first it might not be that important to you, or maybe even annoying the first week or two, as a step of improving
and extending the site it's huge.
This move, in recreating the original site, is a first step in extending different services and streamlining a thing or two.

Though not everything might be a picture perfect recreation yet it's much easier to improve from what you see before you.
I hope you enjoy the new look and look forward to improvements and more as much as i do.

When i wrote the above i hoped the move would go more smoothly than the three hour database moving hell i just experienced, but don't worry though these three hours appear to be gone now and somethings aren't yet as you'd like them to be....we're here and things will (not can) only get better.

j.

ps.your unique visitors will be back in a day or two.

ps2.the link for the icon on your site currently leads to our main page. this is not policy but temporarily.
Due to the move taking me 2,5 hours more than estimated certain things have been spared for a weekend of joy.
Please indulge untill changed.