How about this number 647

[COBOLdinosaur]

647 uniques visiting the site for the last 24 hours.  Generated by some Digg hits, a few from Google, some from Stumbelupon, but mostly from hitting the fron page of Dzone (similar to Digg, but more tech oriented).  I posted one of Matt's articles this morning, and it hit page one this after noon.

Great job Matt.  =D>  =D>  =D>  =D>

There may be a lot of things I have screwed up, but getting traffic to the site is not one of them.  We have quality content being seen by thousands and we are growing the numbers with this kind of exposure.  

Just ride the wave folks, we will get the interface we need;  we know we have the content to compete with anyone. Ya I know a forum is more comfortable, but in what forum are you going to be able to reach a large number of people who need your help.  ERT is on te right track.

BTW, half those 40% of those uniques stayed to look at other stuff; they were not just bounces.

Cd&

[COBOLdinosaur]

If anyone want to vote for Matt's page:
http://www.dzone.com/?p=2&n=10

title:  Bash: Controlling the Command Prompt

 :^)

[COBOLdinosaur]

:glasses7:
It has now also been picked up by delico.us and that is also generating traffic.  It's at: http://del.icio.us/popular/linux

Look's like Matt is getting more that his 15 minutes of fame.  I will also take some credit for timing. Right content, put in the right place, at the right time. :glasses7:

It just takes couple of good articles and you too can become famous on the Internet.  :thumbup:

[nicholassolutions]

:oops:


who woulda thought? On this one, I'd say you deserve pretty much all the credit, Roy  :notworthy:  :notworthy:

This isn't the only tutorial availble on this, and it's probably not the best....but it was almost certainly the best promoted  :glasses7:

I actually never would have thought that many people would be interested in this. Maybe I'll add some of the stuff I was thinking about for customizing the text in the title bar too  :D

[nicholassolutions]

PS:Nice digg links there at the bottom of the tuts :thumbup:
I'll resist the urge for shameless self-promotion  :-$

[COBOLdinosaur]

I'll resist the urge for shameless self-promotion

Rod and I have each done one of our pieces without much success.  Hopefully we will get them fired by visitors, and as we need them; ERT members can always Digg other members.

The trick here is not to start dumping stuf on them or they will treat it as spam and ban us.  What we want to do is keep a steady flow of quality content being place in well travelled spots to build awarness.

We don't just want traffic numbers.  The idea is to target quality users with quality content and build an image as a great resource that user return to when they have problems to solve.

The sites where we are getting the good action from (Dzone, Digg, Delico.us and Stumbleupon) are all community based sites where there is user involvement and interaction.  The user respond to content; exactly the things we are moving toward, and we will be taking the interaction to a new level.

I love it when a plan comes together.  :cheers:

[COBOLdinosaur]

I just wish I could figure out what it takes to get some of those visitors to register in the forums.  Has the forum picked up any addition traffic this week from all the activity on com?

[Huntress]

One new user registered this week.  Not sure how he got here though.

[nicholassolutions]

Here are some stats for the last week or so:

The blurred-out link is your bookmarks page

[COBOLdinosaur]

I can't figure out what it takes to get users into the forum.  We have half a dozen links back in the home page, and it is in the menu on every other page.  It is not just a case of them bouncing, they are not even looking at the forum.

Once I get all the Google analytics set up I will be able to see if they are looking at the list the latest forum topics.  Maybe we can enhance that to generate more action.

Cd&

[nicholassolutions]

I really think the problem all along has been the look of the fourm, and now, the fact that it seems pretty dead. Like you've said, forums are a dime a dozen, and unfortunately we don't have a ton of good content here -- you have to sift through a lot of stuff to find the pearls. In that respect, we're not doing a good job, even though we all identified having junk in the forum as a problem at TOS. I think there are a few things that will help:

1) Better integration between the forum and content (both in terms of look and function)

2) Imrpoved forum look and interface (something that runs more professionally)

3) Cleaning up old and dead topics. Sandi has done a good job of this, but she need help from the mods from each area. Some of the topics should just get deleted. Others should be handed off to Mentors to produce articles from.

4) we need to be more reasonable about what we can answer here. For instance, a lot of Nick's questions have fallen outside the skillset we currently have here e.g. for complicated questions on unix systems admin, we only have 2-3 people here who can really help, and even they are not gurus.  The same goes for some of the other topics like C++. I know a little bit, and I can grind my way through my own stuff if I need to, but I'm not enough of an expert to help most people with serious problems, and I don't usually have time to research them in the same way I would my own. Areas where we cannot offer help, but try to, reflect badly on the site, and to be fair, if we can't support people, then having the TAs is just hype. They should be consolidated and/or removed until we get people here with suitable expertise.

5) There's too much off-topic, site-related conversation and banter in the tech threads (I'm as guilty as anyone of this). The banter should be restricted to the soapbox and lounge, and the site-related stuff should be restricted to a single forum. It's important not to be overbearing about this, but the fact is that especially with our current interface, a single comment like "haha, look how you typed butt when you meant but ROFL" takes up a couple inches of screen space. People who are looking for help will be turned off, and it probably doesn't help the SEO.

6) Related to #5, there we need to avoid topic hijacking. At TOS, if you discuss something off-topic, you get flamed, which is obviously not what we should be going for. Instead, if someone wants to take a conversation in a new direction, they should start a new topic, link to it in the old topic, and start the thread by identifiying it as an offshoot of the original discussion (with a link). With the current system, the discussion often veers all over the place, with none of the issues getting the attention the deserve, and in the end, the information is scrambled, which makes generating articles from it exceedingly difficult.

I have some other ideas related to the new project I showed you a couple days ago. I need some more time to tinker, but I'll PM you about it.

[COBOLdinosaur]

1) I agree.  It was what I was trying t do with the skin contest.  The look of the home page seems to be working, so I will be rolling out variations of it on the other .com pages, then the interactive and conversational parts are easy to integrate.  It it a simple design that is flexible enough to accomodate quite a bit of variety.  If you look at the sites that are successful as content based community sites ththey have pretty simple almost stark interfaces. Te first real integration step needs to be a link to a discussion thread but the articles on .com don't rally have a source to link to where a user can join a conversation. I'll add the link to a thread as long as the suer will get a positive experience from clicking on it.  What I don't want to happen is for the user to leave because they clicked the link and there is nothing there for them.

2) Right now it looks like what it is; a forum.  Changes to make it less like a forum have been criticized and dropped, and most of the changes have been to make it more comfortable as a forum.  So it is still a forum.

3) This goes back to what I said of point 1.  If we can tie topics to articles we have a start.  There is some great stuff in the topics, but getting it into articles requires some work.  Those of us who have done some content understand the work, and the rewards of turning out a good piece of work.  We have some talented members, but we cannot seem to understand how many more users they can help if they produce an article or tutorial instead of answering the same question a hundred times.

4) I think we started out with an assumption of having more participation.  I know I anticipated more growth, and that;  so we need to cut it back to the core of what we can actually support.  We should keep it to what we can support.

5) started out that way, but as the weeks went by with much growth it started to become a private club.  We did not have much coming in from users some we have spent a lot of time talking about the site,So yeah we need to get back to a more formal approach.

6) Yes, we need to follow some simple rules.  It should not be necessary to have a police force, just common sense.

One thing you left out:
7) There are only 24 hours in the day. There is a lot tho be done.  It is time to put the "I wants" in a sack and bring out the "I'll take of <name it>".  A hand full of people have contributed.  Some have done nothing but ask for things to be done for them and some have indicated they were going to help, or do things and then not followed through.  If you don't want to help, I don't think Matt has a problem with that, but Mat and me before him, don't need empty commitments, it is easier to to get thing done when you know who is actually going to follow through, so you don't end up having to juggle priorities to do it yourself.


Anyone who wants to become a famous Internet should get to work on an article or mine the topics before a 10 year old kid steals your idea, puts it in his blog and ends up on the front page of Digg or gets slashdotted.  ERT content is going to be promoted, and this week has demonstrated that good content getsaction if you let people know it exists....  you can answer one question at a time and after a thousand questions you will have helped the same nuber of people the ERT mentors reach in a week with a single article.

[VGR]

This isn't the only tutorial availble on this, and it's probably not the best....but it was almost certainly the best promoted  :glasses7:

I fully join you on that opinion :D

[nicholassolutions]

YOu mean about it being the best promoted, or not being the best?  :-$  :wink:

[Srirangan]

Good job cd& .. 650 uniques a day is a promising start .. Do check with multiple stats programs, they're not always consistant..

Also .. another important stat to keep in mind will be number of pages indexxed by Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:expertsrt.com

Around 900, which is also a good start! :)

--

Now ofcourse the real deal starts .. the website is established .. now its for the managers, and businessmen and promoters to take the website to an altogether new level..  :cheers: