Question Site Analytics for story views data

As you can see in this, unique page views on stories are running around 2000 over a reasonable time released (in weeks). In some cases, you have to look a bit carefully because ALL of the Joomla site page URLs are generated via module, so the way you get to the story matters in how the name is generated. So, for instance, you have to look for ALL the odds-and-ends-2 listings to add up the total.

On the other hand, the old site was much easier to track, as each story was its own unique page. But here, the numbers of views are higher because you're seeing some of the earliest pieces in late summer of 2014 being up and tracked for over a year before the site went down. Nothing on the new site has been released that long.




And, unfortunately, I only have Analytics data covering the time since I got admin/ftp access in July 2014... Warren might have some from the years before that... but I'm not sure.

Not sure. It's out of our control anyway. The last time I spoke to Erin, I gave her my contact info so she could transfer control of the crystalhall.org domain to me. I've heard nothing from anyone there since.

In general, however (and as I was pointing out)... the only numbers that are 'really' down are individual story reads since we started putting two stories out each week. My guess is just that the average WU reader doesn't have time or read quickly enough, for two releases a week (40k words instead of 20k). Which is going to cause problems for them long term, because we're more likely to increase from there... than have skipped weeks.

It's a bit more tracking and coordination work for me to do it split like that. Ideally? Ya, that'd be great. But despite the potential for everyone to load and prep their stuff on the site individually, I'm still doing a lot of it personally. That's changing, as more authors get familiarity to using the site (and I'm prodding them to learn to do it)... but at the moment; it would be extra work to do things on two days instead of one.

Ideally, we get to the point where there are always stories ready based on a planning schedule and I can put their release dates on them a week or two ahead of time and having different days of the week for each category works to our benefit. In that same ideal system, there would be someone doing that 'in category' scheduling, author motivating, editing, and so forth for each group (for Gen 1, 2, 0, and Fan Fic) and I (or whoever is dealing with site operation/maint) will be completely outside the publishing process. Even if only 2 of the 4 groups releases a 20k word piece each week... that's still more than 20 novel's a year worth of content. Which, btw, is the pace we've been pushing lately... 40k per week is 40-45% of a novel per week. Not quite a problem for those of us who read more than a hundred books a year... but the average reader? That's my guess as to why the numbers have dropped a little per story, if it isn't just our measuring method.


But that's... down the road some. For NOW, we still need to work on both developing authors and opportunities and growing the community without letting the few overly critical push people away faster than we can draw them in. We do want to keep pushing a certain standard on official released content... and that means continuing to have editorial control and that also means that authors need to receive feedback on their work to improve. It WOULD be far easier to protect authors from negative attitudes if everything were moderated or if we had rules as limiting as BCTS. We actually give people a lot of freedom to say what they want... and how they feel about stories, under the assumption that enlightened self-interest should keep anyone from being TOO negative. After all, you say bad stuff about authors, authors don't want to write for you anymore and then there's no more free stories.

Then the only thing we should have to worry about are the people who think their opinion (even when negative) is too important to be ignored... and feelings be damned, they're just going to share it and the authors should just sit there and like it. Or the people who intentionally want to 'burn it all down.' And to be honest, there are a few people over the years who have stayed just this side of 'burn it all down' that we were tempted to just permanently lock out... and in many of those cases, the only rational we can think of is ego/jealousy. They want what the WU has... and if they cannot have it, they don't want us to, either. We always run the risk of being harassed/attacked by those who hate TG related content too. It would be easy enough to harass authors with rude feedback as a way to shut them down from writing about a subject that you think is immoral, etc.

Despite the number dip in specific story reads lately, the community IS consistently building. Every Monday since Oct has resulted in a larger peak in visits and overall larger numbers. I ran a series of adverts last year and we saw some growth but weren't really set up to properly monitor just how effective they were... and of course, the crashes in the fall cost us some people. I'm planning a slightly larger campaign this summer, assuming finances support it (ie ad revenue, etc). Now that we have things migrated and ALL reading is happening here instead of here and via the old site, our Analytics info should be far more accurate and effective, and we can tailor the ads for what works and get rid of what doesn't.