Category: Web development

Share your stats

Posted on by chris

There’s a meme on Twitter at the moment entitled Share your Stats where web guys are sharing statistics about the browsers viting websites. I’m not sure who started this meme, but I guess they are trying to get a feel for how prevalent Internet Explorer is, particularly version 6. You know most web developers don’t like Internet Explorer 6, right?

Anyway, I have a few sites I can share the statistics for. Here they are:

Share Your Stats meme results
Website Browsers Operating systems
Firefox Internet Explorer Safari Chrome Opera Windows Mac Linux
stillbreathing.co.uk 51.47% 29.11% 9.55% 5.04% 1.79% 75.88% 16.87% 6.55%
wibsite.com 69.68% 18.28% 4.81% 4.15% 1.10% 77.50% 15.62% 6.28%
myjournal.com 34.58% 51.40% 8.41% 2.80% n/a 86.92% 8.41% 0.93%
performerjs.org 65.73% 11.32% 8.45% 9.77% 2.88% 73.52% 16.72% 9.11%
beatsbase.com 45.40% 33.97% 12.06% 5.71% 2.86% 80.95% 17.14% 1.27%
comp-unlimited.co.uk 16.91% 75.21% 3.83% 2.23% 0.46% 93.45% 4.73% 1.14%
Large business website 7.52% 81.22% 9.01% 1.63% 0.35% 90.28% 8.71% 0.26%

That’s pretty much what I expected, with a very large proportion of visitors to the more commercial sites weighted towards Internet Explorer and Windows. For the other sites, particularly those with a heavy web development slant, the statistics show a wider spread of browsers. It’s good to see Chrome making inroads, but these kind of results must be somewhat disheartening for Opera.

Wibstats – statistics for WordPress MU and BuddyPress

Posted on by chris

Update 9th September 2009: I’m too good to you, I really am. The screenshots are now out of date as I’ve just committed a new version (0.4) which contains even more reports, a cleaned up interface and a few bug fixes. Please download and try it out.

I finally got the page about Wibstats updated with some screenshots. If you’re looking for the best (in my opinion, anyway!) stats plugin for WordPress MU – and it works with BuddyPress – head over here.

If you just can’t wait, here are some screenshots:

Main stats page

Searches

Recent visitor map

Session report

There you have it. A top-notch plugin for WordPress MU and Buddypress that gives every blog in your system their own powerful statistics.

Wow! Caching is the cure for what ails yer!

Posted on by chris

I run a site which has been performing very badly recently – lots of crashes, memory exceptions and the like. It’s hosted by the wonderful Dreamhost and I contacted them to see what the problem was. Basically the site was using too much memory. Ho hum.

So I took a quick look around and found this article on improving BuddyPress performance written by my friend Andy Peatling. Basically I just turned on wp_cache in my wp-config.php file and enabled XCache and look:

Caching makes the world faster

If that’s not a fantastic result I don’t know what is.

So if you’re a DJ and you’re looking for free mix hosting, BeatsBase.com is now working again!

I’m also rewriting the site to have some more Web 2.0 Social Networking features (using, you guessed it, BuddyPress) such as cool member profiles, groups and friends, on-site messaging and more. I also aim to get some kind of integration with Facebook and Twitter going, but of quite what nature I’m not sure yet. This is all dependent on time, of course.

Collection of web dev links

Posted on by chris

I send myself interesting web development links I find, with the intention to do some further research and enhance my uber-skills. It never works out. So instead here’s a list of links I’ve sent myself over the last few months (newest at the top) which I’ve not had chance to look at properly:

  1. BBC releases a JavaScript library: http://www.bbc.co.uk/glow/
  2. Google web code optimizer, not sure what this is: http://code.google.com/p/web-optimizator/
  3. Easily embed video in web pages: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
  4. PHP security tips: http://www.noupe.com/php/php-security-tips.html
  5. CSS3 cheat sheet: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/13/css-3-cheat-sheet-pdf/
  6. Build apps without any code: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/08/10-web-apps-to-build-the-next-big-thing-without-writing-any-code/
  7. Best free WordPress themes: http://www.blogperfume.com/45-best-free-wordpress-themes-of-all-time/
  8. Beautiful free icons: http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/22-extremely-detailed-and-beautiful-icon-sets
  9. Anothernew JavaScript library: http://rightjs.org/
  10. Handle dates in JavaScript: http://www.datejs.com/
  11. Diagnosing technical issues with SEO: http://www.slideshare.net/janeandrobot/diagnosing-technical-issues-with-search-engine-optimization
  12. LiberKey, massive collection of portable apps: http://www.liberkey.com/en/liste-des-logiciels-liberkey-ultimate.html
  13. Great add-ons for FireBug: http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/13-must-have-add-ons-to-strengthen-firebug/
  14. Create charts with JavaScript: http://www.webdesignbooth.com/14-javascript-resources-and-plugins-for-creating-a-stylish-chart/
  15. SEO toolkit for IIS: http://www.iis.net/extensions/SEOToolkit
  16. Gmail/Facebook style chat: http://anantgarg.com/2009/05/13/gmail-facebook-style-jquery-chat/
  17. Get visitor geographic location with Google JavaScript API: http://briancray.com/2009/05/29/find-web-visitors-location-javascript-google-api/
  18. Growing social networks: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15712612/Growing-Social-Networks
  19. jQuery performance rules: http://www.artzstudio.com/2009/04/jquery-performance-rules/
  20. Free screen recording apps: http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/10-free-screen-recording-softwares-for-creating-attractive-screencasts/
  21. WYSIWYG for jQuery: http://code.google.com/p/jwysiwyg/
  22. Find alternatives to commercial apps: http://alternativeto.net/

Geekery roundup, June 2009

Posted on by chris

It’s been a month since my last blog post, but a lot has been happening. So in Hugh style here’s a randomly ordered list of the things I’ve been up, and things that have run through my head, to over the last few weeks.

  1. Plenty-o-plugins

    I’ve got a large handful of plugins for WordPress MU completed (or at least to a state where I can release them). The plugins are: statistics, sitewide newsletters, personal welcomes, demo data creator and secure invites.

    I’m also happy that they have been accepted for the official WordPress plugin repository, so keep an eye on my developer page to see when these plugins get updated and new ones get added. I have a few more ideas for plugins I’m going to try to do over the next couple of months.

  2. I like quick development

    Writing those plugins has made something about myself quite clear to me. I enjoy quick development tasks much more than long ones. So writing a plugin that takes 8 – 24 hours is MUCH preferable to writing a full system that takes 100 hours or more. With WordPress’ plugin architecture I think I can do more of that quick development, leaving the fiddly slow bits (user management, templating, database manipulation) to the WordPress core.

  3. myJournal updates

    Although most of the changes I’ve made on myJournal aren’t readily apparent to visitors, they have mae a big difference in how easy it is to manage your profile and site in the system. Especially the showrooms (for example this contemporary designer jewellery showroom).

    One very recent thing (completely done last night, in fact) was adding Twitter updates to profiles. You can keep up to date with me here. That was another of those quick development things.

  4. Computers Unlimited

    One of the oldest serious sites I developed is currently entering version 8, so you’ll soon be able to buy printer cartridges, toner and more using a much nicer interface. Development has taken much longer than I hoped, and frankly I’ll be glad when it’s finished.

  5. jQuery

    A lot has been said about this wonderful JavaScript library, so I won’t dwell on its finer points. Suffice to say it’s continuing to astound me with how easy it makes advanced JavaScript.

  6. Performer

    And when you combine jQuery with Performer (JavaScript without the code) you’re on cloud nine. A couple of months ago I launched the new Performer website, which I’m really pleased with. As I tell people, my design skills are more miss than hit, but this time I think I got it right.

  7. BeatsBase.com

    After increasing the upload limit for mixes to 1gb the other month, BeatsBase.com has been really unstable. Error all over the place. Rather than wade through the code to try to fix it, I’m taking the opportunity to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress MU and add in BuddyPress which will give some great new features. I’m also going to rewrite my own custom plugins so they are much better, and maybe those will even find their way into the public domain.

I’ve done a few other things (see my Twitter updates in the sidebar of my site, for example), and even some that don’t involved geekery. I’m planning on doing a similar round-up post to this about the new things happening in the busy world of web development (new browsers, new tools, new sites). Who knows, maybe I’ll get to do that before next month.