Articles

Curious about stats on my blog and website

Colin Angus Mackay — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:05:56 GMT

Recently I added Google Analytics to my website and blog. It has been quite interesting to see what statistics it gave back.

For my blog a large number of people never leave the home page with 17% of all hits there. I do have quite a few recent posts up there and I guess there isn’t any reason for them to go any further than that.

The next most popular page is a post on “Why is it so hard to hire good software developers?” with 11% of the share. It is a relatively new topic so I’m sure that over time that will drop. However, it isn’t the newest topic around, so perhaps it is something people want to find out about. Perhaps others who are searching for software developers like to hear that there are people in the same boat. For people looking for a job, perhaps there are looking to see what employers are looking for.

What is more interesting is seeing the pages that have been up for a while. With 9% of all page views in the last week is a post on “Visual Studio 2005 on Vista” detailing my troubles trying to get VS2005 installed on Vista. This is obviously a problem that a lot of people are running in to.

With 5% of all page views in the last week is a post about a “SQL Exception because of a timeout”. So it is obvious that people are looking for information on that topic too.

However, what surprised me the most was that the single biggest search term that brought people to my blog was nothing to do with technology. The most searched term to bring people to my blog included the word “chocolate” e.g. “Chocolate Cake” or “Chocolate Crunch”. And it brought them to a page with a recipe for “Chocolate Crunch Cake”

On to my website and I was interested to see that the most viewed page was a beginners article on “Passing values between forms in .NET” with a staggering 43% of page views.

The second most viewed page on my website was the article to go with the session I gave at DDD5 on “An Introduction to Mock Objects” with a mere 6% of page views.

So, what about SQL Injection Attacks (the article I consider to be the most important). It has just 4% of page views. Well, at least some people are concerned about database security. I just wish it were more people considering the number of times I see on forums some really poorly written code to get something out of a database.

All in all, I think this information has given me some ideas on what people are interested in and what they want to read. I hope I can therefore provide more information on related subjects that are of use to people.

Test Driven Development by Example

Colin Angus Mackay — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:55:01 GMT

I've finally got around to finishing an article. I've got a stack of half finished articles just waiting to be completed so I hope to get more articles finished in the near future. Mock Objects next I think (but don't hold your breath - I've got regular expressions, LINQ and a whole bunch of other topics waiting too)

There are two versions of the article. The full article is available on my website: Test Driven / First Development by Example (full edition). The shorter version is available on Code Project: Test Driven / First Development by Example (abridged edition).

Tags: tdd test driven development test first development agile

Because you have a passion for it

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:31:08 GMT

A thread recenly appeared on Code Project from a new author. He was put off by the apparent low votes he received for his article on C# Coding Standards. The article itself wasn't too bad for a first attempt and a number of the regulars attempted to offer suggestions and to encourage him. The best comment, in my opinion, came from Marc Clifton, His advice was "Never write for other people. Write for yourself, because you have a passion for it."

NOTE: This entry was rescued from the Google Cache. The original date was Sunday, 8th April, 2007