Monthly Archives: July 2012

Google Analytics thoughts

I’m adding a tracking code from my own account to this blog, to be able to share that info with other blog users. (Got a request to get reports. Seems like ppl being able to look at their own reports would be more sustainable, possibly more useful.)

At the same time, I’m working on analytics things for the main site. I really want to get automated event tracking working; it’s funny, I’d gotten used to that being part of a module in Drupal. I found a decent-looking bit of JS, but it works with the newer asynchronous setup, which means changing the template, configuration sets, etc., etc. 🙁 Need to figure out the best (least cumbersome + not breaking stuff) way to switch over.

I’ve also got a huge year-over-year report that I’ve built by hand…which was useful, but holy cow labor-intensive. Took me most of July to figure it out with June’s data. That’s not sustainable. The best idea that I have so far is do something like that once a quarter, and then spend the rest of the quarter exploring what comes out of it; either researching why something might have changed or changing content to improve a stat. Or both, I guess. It really is all about turning numbers into action.

That and I also need to get better funnels set up.

Sigh.

Had to remind myself yesterday, when I was in a bit of funk, that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I’m planning on being here for a while, certainly, and sometimes it’s better to take my time and really figure something out. Certainly better than freaking out.

Two months

This morning doesn’t feel like a great time to be posting a note about having been here for two months…I’m super-groggy this morning, starting the week with a sleep deficit; the weather’s very gloomy for July; CMS2 isn’t working; Susan’s out of town, and I’m feeling somewhat adrift.

And yet…I’m still glad to be here.

Webinar: Summer of Learning (HTML5) session #1

Gah, I hate the idea that HTML5 is a catchphrase, and not simply a spec. :\

Nothing new to me here.

Still sad about HTML5’s loosey-goosey syntax. (anchor tag wrapping around multiple block level tags?!)

shim/shiv and/or modernizr. (I should probably go look at modernizr again. altho…interesting, it adds classes to the body to say what is & isn’t supported.)

Homework! “make the drink once you finish the assignment.”

Music to code by

Today’s version: Pandora “Erasure channel” – 80s synthpop like woah. OMD, New Order, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Human League, Eurythmics, Soft Cell… It worked for me.

Let the system do what it’s good at

I can’t believe nobody ever thought to just use the image data to build an image gallery. Seriously? It took me a grand total of like 20 minutes, plus another 20 of screwing around trying to find the gallery script that was already in the system. (Which I don’t like, but that is another story.)

Learning by osmosis

I have all these printouts posted in my office that Linda (former interim designer?) had printed out from Hannon Hill & some schools about how Cascade works. They’ve just been kind of background noise on the wall; I look at them from time to time, but not too in-depth.

But today I was braiding my hair to get ready for this lunchtime exercise class, and I was looking at one of the printouts, and something about “block chooser” leaped out at me. And I remembered that in data definitions, you can let most fields allow multiple entries. And then I realized that you could probably do that to include multiple RSS feeds on a single page. (Or even to create a page with just one, but to make sure that it got the right template etc.) I guess I’ve been looking at that every day for weeks and only today did it click together.

So: hurray!

Learning Rails, Take 2

I happened across Code School’s “Rails for Zombies” today (I’d seen a link to “Try Git“, was impressed, and started poking around), and holy cow, it might actually stick now!

Three things about it:

  1. Immediately they recommended going through “Try Ruby” if you didn’t already have familiarity with the language. That got me a taste of the syntax, which is pleasantly sane.
  2. There isn’t any futzing about with setting up an environment. Where I got stuck (initially) was just in setting up the environment on my machine.
  3. Lots of little bits of trial and error, following VERY short videos. With two monitors, I’ve got the slides open nearby so I can skim back and forth to see the exact syntax & whatnot. I’ve been doing all the extra credit just to get it to stick better.

So I’m optimistic.

Links

I added a widget for the “webdev” tag on my personal Pinboard account. I’m sort of a web-based magpie, and Pinboard has been my nest for a while. (As in, I was an alpha user, although I didn’t switch until…I’m not sure, maybe when there was a rumor that MS was buying Yahoo, and I got freaked out about Delicious? But before the rumor that Yahoo was closing Delicious, and before they actually sold it to the guys that started YouTube. Seriously, I’m glad Pinboard is one guy’s thing with an actual stable business plan.)

If you’re at all interested in the sorts of things that I’m following in the web development would, check it out. I get links from all over; some I save to read later, some as reference, and some just in the hopes that someone else will see & find it useful. Enjoy!