Four Weeks Old
So this little website is a month old. Launched on 12th
October it celebrated four whole weeks yesterday. And what a fourweek it
has been. According to the statistics that Lycos collects on my behalf,
over one thousand visits have been recorded and those thousand visitors
have registered over five thousand page impressions. Those of you with
your own websites will know how addictive webstats are. Those without
cannot begin to imagine. You begin to see them as a gauge of your worth.
Your entire existence is condemned or justified each and every day by
those bar graphs and the cold hard numbers they contain. Perhaps
fittingly, yesterday also saw a record broken as six hundred page
impressions were recorded in one day. The number of visitors fell just
short of the record but you can’t have everything.
The stats tell three stories. How many people are visiting, how many pages
are being viewed and, most importantly perhaps, how many pages each
visitor is viewing. It is fruitless (or bootless, for both are acceptable)
to have a hundred visitors if they simply look at the index page and sod
off again. Equally it is bootless (or fruitless, for both are acceptable)
to have one devoted fan that views a hundred page each day. My average
varies between three and ten pages per visitor. I know – I study the stats
too much but I’m not alone in that. Ask anyone who runs a website and they
will either admit they are stats addicts or they are rotten liars. Catch
them unawares and they’ll tell you about the spreadsheet they have to draw
pretty graphs. Go on – ask them. Ask them now. Or better still, ring them
in the middle of the night when they’ll be groggy and less likely to be
evasive.
I suppose I should’ve been looking for a job all this time but I found
this infinitely more satisfying. This has an end result which doesn’t
equate to “**** off and **** yourself you ****ing ****” which was my
experience of looking for employment last time. People are impressed when
you say you’ve got your own site (or at least they are until you start
boring them with stats) and this increases tenfold when that site is a dot
com. Then it’s a real website. It’s got status. That status lasts just as
long as it takes me to explain what a Vervoid actually is. Then I plummet
back to Earth and am once more a sad loser who spends too long on the
computer and not enough time in the real world.
I like the way the site has developed. The creation of devoted sub-sites
for each of the sections means there is something for even the most
web-weary surfer. It allows different facets of what I (and probably I
alone) would call my personality to escape. This columns section has been
a much bigger hit than I was expecting. Due in the most part to people
offering something other than my self-pitying drivel. So it’s
(alphabetical) hats off to Ms Baynes, Mr Curnow, Mr Generic, Mr Hart, Mr
Hunt and Mr Lewis for their writings. Special hats off to Mr Hunt whose
daily musings on Dr Who in order will surely make an excellent book some
day.
I’ve had some lovely emails and comments from people too. Over the course
of a weekend I visited all the message boards of which I’m a member and
shamelessly promoted the site. Shaun Lyon of Outpost Gallifrey was very
complimentary. That’s his quote on the main page. Looking through the
website forum of OG he isn’t a webmaster who praises every site that is
advertised so his words really mean something. I won’t list the others (a)
because their comments were in a private arena rather than a public one
and (b) I’ve not got access to my inbox here and I’m bound to miss
someone. You know who you are and you are all sweeties.
I have some future plans for the site. Well, it’s more of the same really.
Once the current Dennis Brent serial is over with, I’m hoping to put up a
revised version of the Secret Diaries of Dennis Brent. Those who know the
origins of the character will know that some of the early entries refer to
real people and real events. This is, obviously, very unfair and the
revision of the material will hopefully detach Dennis once and for all
from real life. The Encyclopaedia Britellica will continue to grow. I’m
aiming for around twenty new entries each week. Which means that, within
one hundred and four years, we’ll have twenty five thousand entries.
Something to look forward to and no mistake. New issues of the New Womb
will be around every week or so, the Doctor Who episode guide will be
added to until it’s finished and then amended and updated and improved for
ever and ever. Spoon will continue to share his trivia obsession and the
eclectic articles that he seems to be able to find from wherever it is he
gets his eclectic articles. We’ll have more from Gerald Benson – a man I’m
infinitely fond of even though you – My Readers – do not yet really know
him. And of course I’ll be learning new web building tricks so new treats
will be along just as soon as I can harness the tesh. So stick around
because those who like what’s here will like what is to come and those who
don’t will have stopped reading on October the thirteenth.
Well that was a very self-indulgent column wasn’t it, boys and girls. I’ll
let you get back to your porn.
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