It is already more than a month ago that I moved the site. Antagonist, the
Dutch ISP which hosts the site now, runs a traditional
LAMP setup,
and provides DirectAdmin to manage to manage it all.
The DirectAdmin web interface provides easy access to various settings. It also
provides web access to the Apache error logs and the site statistics.
Browsing through the Apache error log, I immediately noticed that it largely consisted of the same error over and over again. The server could not find the favicon:
File does not exist: /var/www/icons/MSE16x16Trans.png
That the favicon wasn't found was not obvious when you visited the site. The
site also has a file named favicon.ico in the root directory. When
a browser isn't told where to find the favicon, it looks for that file instead.
Internet Explorer 9 still does not support favicons properly, ignores the
specified favicon and goes for favicon.ico.
When the server cannot find the specified file and therefore
does not return that favicon to the browser, the browser ask for favicon.ico. So, the browser was
displaying an icon.
The favicon.ico image is slightly different from the regular favicon.
The average visitor is not likely to pay enough attention to it to notice the
difference. I had noticed it, but had not
stopped to think about it.
The site used to keep several icons in an icons subdirectory. That worked
fine, until the site was moved; all pages displayed fine, but all the icons were
missing. The icons subdirectory name conflicts with a virtual Apache directory that Apache
keeps its icons in. I solved the conflict by changing the name of my directory
from icons to icons, and updating my style sheets.
This error message told me that I had forgotten about the favicon. One of the
icons in the he icons subdirectory was used as the favicon, and the
location of the favicon is not specified in a style used by all pages, but
through a command in the page header of each page. All these pages were still
specifying icons/MSE16x16Trans.png as the
favicon, and the Apache icons directory does not contain a file with that name.
A quick search & replace through all the pages solved this issue; all pages
were updated to identify icons/MSE16x16Trans.png file as the
favicon.
That small change took care of about 99% of all errors. The next most common message is a warning about a non-matching RSA certificate. I'll have to take that up with Antagonist.
The error log also contained these three lines (abbreviated for readability):
File does not exist: /tamurajones.net/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png
File does not exist: /tamurajones.net/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png
File does not exist: /tamurajones.net/apple-touch-icon.png
Some user agent is requesting Apple Touch icons. The server could not find these because they weren't there. Like most webmasters, I had not even considered the need for Apple Touch icons yet.
Apple Safari does not request Apple Touch icons. Mobile Safari does request
the icons, but does not do so as a matter of course; that would be a waste of
bandwidth. Mobile Safari only request these icons when the user gives it a
reason to do. An iPhone or iPad only needs the Apple Touch icons when a user
creates a shortcut to your site on their home screen.
So, what the error log tells me is that there is at least one iPhone or iPad
user out there who has created a shortcut to my site on their home screen. I
imagine that the current shortcut, based on the 16 x 16 favicon, does not look
very good. Perhaps I should do something about that. Such discerning taste in
shortcuts should be rewarded.
DirectAdmin relies on Webalizer for the presentation of site statistics.
Antagonist has been hosting the site since 2011 March 5. The numbers for
March are lower than they would be if they had been hosting the site the
entire month, but they are a good indication nonetheless. The numbers for April
so far suggest that the final numbers will be higher than those for March, even
after correction for the March stats being too low.
The server statistics show a few thousand unique visitors each month, a total
bandwidth usage of several gigabytes and more than 100.000 hits per month.
That last number may sound like a lot, it is well over a million hits per year, but it
isn't so odd. Those few thousand unique visitors view thousands of pages, and
each page consists of multiple files, so it adds up quickly.
The number of hits strongly depends on the site design.
The current site has a clean, minimalist design. If I had opted for a visually
overloaded site, with lots of logos, badges, image buttons, social icons and
gadgets such as tag clouds on each page, the site would probably rack up about
half a million hits per month, easily more than five million hits per year. Still, even with the minimalist design, the
number of files transferred is already approaching 100.000 per month.
A quick calculation shows that the average visitor is consuming about 1½ MB of bandwidth per month. The use of web fonts is partly to blame for that, but even if you correct for that, the average visitor is still using a lot more bandwidth than the average page takes up. That's good, it suggests that visitors are do not just read one article, but like what they read enough to hang around and read some other articles. A quick look in the Apache usage log confirms that; it is easy to spot users requesting multiple articles before leaving the site again.
The site does not need a PrientFriendly button, because it is print-friendly already.
The stats includes a list of the 30 most popular files. The two most popular files
are the style sheets. No surprise there, as every page loads them.
There are two style sheets. One to make the site like good, and one to make print looks good.
The print style sheet basically strips the header, footer and menu from the site,
so that you do not waste paper printing those. It also adds the actual URL
behind each link, so that you do not need to guess what the URL is. All this is
standard CSS, supported by any modern web browser. The site does not need a
PrientFriendly button, because it is print-friendly already.
The style sheets are closely followed in popularity by several icons and font files.
Browsers should cache the fonts, yet the font files still accounted for more
than quarter of the bandwidth used. The fonts even dominate the top ten of URLs by bandwidth, pushing out most of
the large bitmap images that would otherwise dominate this top ten. That is one reason I disabled
all the web
fonts about a week ago.
The main reason though is that I continue to notice problems
with major web browsers. Google Chrome somehow manages to mess up it cache when
you use fonts, and
the last Firefox 4.0 Beta seemed to crash simply because I used the Gentium font.
The site continues to take advantage of some fonts, but only if these fonts are
already on your system.
When I disregard the style sheets and the fonts, the top spots are taken up by recent articles. That means that many visitors are most interested in the four or five most recent articles. That makes perfect sense; return visitors are likely to check out what's new since they last visited.
The stats for March show more than thousand unique referrers. Unsurprisingly, google.com is a top ten referrer, but the top 30 of referrers is largely populated with pages from the site itself.
This again confirms that visitors do not quickly leave the site to surf elsewhere, but stick
around to read yet another article. The articles in the top 30 of referrers are
the articles that
many visitor choose to visit as they browse from one article to another. In other
words; these are roughly the most popular articles.
This list is not dominated by recent
articles, but does contain a fair number of reviews and how-to articles. This confirms the
impression I got from emails already, that many visitors enjoy product information, opinions,
tips and tricks.
The search strings that people used before they landed on the site confirm that users are googling for information and opinion on products. These strings also show that many users come to the site for information on such technical things as browser detection. For example, the article series on Chrome Frame, particularly the article that introduced the JavaScript-free detection technique for Chrome Frame is quite popular.
The Top 15 of User Agents requires a bit of interpretation, as the Webalizer
overview shows the raw user agent strings. Strings like AppleWebKit/5 do not make it hard to guess
what browser visitors are using; that is a WebKit-based browser such as Apple
Safari or Google Chrome.
A site like useragentstrings.com can help you associate a browser with the user
agent string, but Webalizer seems to show abbreviated user agent strings instead
of complete ones.
Most visitors are running a modern browser based on WebKit or Gecko. Which
web browser visitors use is not really important; the site uses web standards exclusively, so that visitors can use any web
browser they like.
Microsoft has a web browser nowadays. Microsoft isn't expected to roll Internet
Explorer 9 out via Windows Update until the end of June, but it is
already available for download, and millions of users have upgraded already.
Internet Explorer 9 makes up about three percent of traffic. About 3 percent of
visitors are on MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Despite the thousands of visitors, both the googlebot and the bingbot visit the site often enough to be in the top 15. That is good; it means that both Google and Bing regularly check the site for updates and changes.
The final Webalizer overview should be a pie chart that shows which countries the
visitors come from, but there appears to be something wrong with Antagonist's
Webalizer configuration; it merely shows that all users are from
Unresolved/Unknown
. I don't think that's a real country.
Checking out the error log alerted to me a small change I had forgotten to
make. Now that I've made it, the error log no longer flooded with the same error
over and over again. It also got me thinking about supporting Apple Touch icons.
The site statistics show that the site has thousands of unique visitors each
months. Quite a few are return visitors that check out the most recent articles.
That visitors read more than one article and keep coming back means they like
what they read. Visitors bookmark the site. Visitors tend to browse around and
when they do so, they show most interest in background articles, reviews, and
how-to articles; looking for information, opinions, tips & tricks.
All this changes nothing, I'll just keep writing whatever I fancy writing about.
Apple Touch icons are kind of interesting…
The section on browsers was based on the data for March, while the data for April shows visitors using Internet Explorer 9. The section has been redone.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.