Let's Get Matt Dugg.

[nicholassolutions]

I wish that was true.

I don't -- the way it is, it's a hobby, a fun project, an no one is relying on it for $$$$. That keeps things from going sour  :wink:

[COBOLdinosaur]

BTW,

In the full 24 hour cycle we loaded 10,257 page for 7741 visitors. That's and average of 427 an hour. we are down to about 150 an hour now.  The return visitor rate is up to 15% so I guess they liked what they saw and are coming back.  

We are now also starting to see the value of the secondary links that get posted; deli.icio.us is not generating 10% of our traffic off of shared bookmarks.. And as a side note my CSS piece is still on the front page of Dzone with 10 votes and over 250 clicks.  

I did not attempt to promote anything today, and I don't think I will tomorrow unless it really quiets down.  I want to see how much the digg effect spreads out.

Cd&

[coral1]

Also the traffic continues as we get the after shocks.

I noticed that I don't have the place all to myself as much as I use to.  :wink:

[COBOLdinosaur]

I think maybe we turned a corner.  No one can doubt that we have the content to attact users, after what we saw this week.  Now we just need to get the interface in shape to be able to interact with users.

It's fun watching the numbers.  It is neat following what is going on with your stuff on Digg or dzone, but what we neeed now is a spot for some of those folks to stop in for a cup of joe and tech talk.

 :coffee2:  :coffee2:  :coffee2:

Okay ready for the next challenge.  Getting the interfaces hooked up.

[Srirangan]

I think we should get the forum neatly integrated onto the homepage. For example a list of popular topics from the forum on the homepage, or "featured topics" as Sitepoint.com does it.

Once they get hooked on to the forum, they're here for ever. bwahahahah  :sign5:

[COBOLdinosaur]

sri,

Give your head a shake.  The ERT home page already has an easy to reach button that list the latest forum topics.  It already has a link to take you to the RSS feed page for the forum.  Every page on the content side has at least one link to the forum and another to register.  We have had over 15,000 visitors this week.  Everyone one of them had an opportunity to look at the forum.  They stayed on the site an average of 3+ minutes.  Where are they?  Where are their comments and questions?

We are now seeing over a 10% return rate on those visitors who came from Digg and Dzone.  We see heavy traffic from new format communities like Stumbleupon, del.icio.us and blinklist.  The forum format has no future.  What users want is quality content linked to discussions.

That is the direction that ERT is going.  I am working on the final bits of "ERT2", an interface that marries the content to Round Table discussion. I will be putting it up in the next week with the project broken down into tasks for any who want to participate.

There is no gain or glory in copying what others have already done.  There is no way of build something new and different with off the shelf software.  There will be pieces of Drupal, Wiki, Joomla, Mambo and PHPBB that can do specific tasks but what is going to be built for the ERT interface will be unique, and that takes custom programming to incorporate the usable pieces.

With good content and a little promotional luck, I managed to put 15,000 users on the site this week.  I could put a million on the site, and the forum is still not going to get action, because it is not what our target market is looking for. Forums are old Web.  That is not to say they will disappear, but they are becoming irrelevant on an Internet that centers on interaction with well organized information.  I wish it wasn't so.  I start ERT from the forum format and expected to be able to grow it along with content.  It did not fly, adn there is nothing to be gained by putting a new face on an old format.  The format has to be new.

If you come up with something to fire up the forum let me know, because I would prefer the comfortable and familar surroundings of an old-fashioned forum.  The fact is 15,000 visitors had an opportunity to use the forum this week; and there is not a single question posted from them.  The fact is the links to our content got posted in old style forums by about 15 of those users compared to over 300 saving the bookmark on del.icio.us and and around 25 posting links to ERT in their blogs.  The fact is that we get 20-30 hits a day from old style forums and 200 each form Stumbleupon and del.icio.us.

ERT is part of WEB2.  That is the future.  That is where the growth is.  That is where the greatest potential for success is.  Unfortunately forums don't work well in the web2 paradigm.

I am a dinosaur that has survived by adapting.  I started out writing assmebler and COBOL using systems based on punched cards and mag tape with 32k of total memory.  I can still do all the old stuff, but today I work with UML, Java, and high speed networks.  You have to adapt or end up in the dustbin.

[Srirangan]

Cd&,

I remember mentioning months ago that a phpbb forum was going to take ERT nowhere. I stressed that we needed custom backend asap. Then I was told that phpbb is a good open-source project and has a huge support base.

Now you are telling me to shake my head and realize that phpbb forum has to be done away with  :scratch:

Btw don't fall for Web2.0, it's just yet another funky industry buzz word. Much like AJAX, FJAX  [-(

[COBOLdinosaur]

Cd&,

I remember mentioning months ago that a phpbb forum was going to take ERT nowhere. I stressed that we needed custom backend asap. Then I was told that phpbb is a good open-source project and has a huge support base.

Now you are telling me to shake my head and realize that phpbb forum has to be done away with  :scratch:

Btw don't fall for Web2.0, it's just yet another funky
industry buzz word. Much like AJAX, FJAX  [-(

when you wanted to do a different forum, you were porposing changing what we used... Drupal I believe.  Back then, we still thought that we could do the discussions using a forum format.  We came tp see that is not the case.  What you were proposing was to just do a forum with a different interface, but it was still a forum.  Drupal , Mambo and MediaWiki all have exactly the same problem as PHPBB.  They all have a narrow scope and severe design limitations.  They are difficult to customize in any way that the original authors did not conceive of; and they break when you try and stretch them too far.

A round table discussson is NOT a forum. You will see that when I post the design proposals.  You will also see that there is no software around that is going to do what we want, because it is different than what anybody else has done.

I also have not said the forum has to be done away with.  However I do not see it ever being an importnat place for users.  It will continue, I'm sure, in some form as  place were Mentor continue to discuss things among themselves; which has been its primary use up to now.

As for falling for buzz words ... Web2 is simply a label being applied to a movement that encompasseas a lot of things and it is a convenint generalization, if you want we can refer to it as:
"the open source software driven shift in basic Internet usages that has given rise to collaborative information sharing across social networking platforms characterized by content syndication, democratization of content placment, and diverse services made available through web applciations to deliver services with high levels of interoperability", however "web 2" is easier to type.  If you really want a buzz word try defining "the semanic web" which is what "web2" becomes when it evoles to "web3".

The fact is, that the way information is created, distributed, presented, aggregated, summarized, reviewed and used has all changed drasticaly in the lat 2 years.  Those who fail to adapt will suffer the same fate as the millions of failed, dead and shattered Web site that litter the Internet.  

That is why AOL is using Netscape to test new presentation formats similar to Digg; why Excite and Yahoo are scrambling to make more free content selected by the user available.  It is why Amazon is experimenting with Alexadex; Google is spreading out into all kinds of web applictions; and Microsoft is trying to figure out how to keep MSN an important player in imformation delivery.

When you see the ERT2 design maybe you will understand what ERT needs to become and maybe you won't, but is is going to be unique; and round table discussions are not a forum; and they are not a cms, and they are not going to be built with a package; though pieces from many sources might be able to contribute.

[Srirangan]

I wasn't proposing drupal, nor was I opposing it. I believe I was throwing up ideas. Drupal anyway becomes a CMS rather than a forum system.