Grammar Captive

Hopefully Grammar Captive’s tardiness in ushering in the new summer is not a premonition for what the fall will bring.

After many weeks working on the reporting side of Matomo, work has begun on the tracking side.  Grammar Captives first three event listeners were put into place today.

Also, Grammar Captive’s introductory podcast is nearly completed.  The Intro begins with an anonymous South Asian rhythm followed by a piano étude from Chopin. The Outro has yet to be decided, but the entire podcast will likely end in some sort of drum beat.

I was once told in a personal conversation with a renown sitar player that Western and Eastern music could never meet.  As I believe in both separation and fusion, the two sounds are separated by silence and my voice.

Have a great weekend!

Roddy

Slowly, but surely, the excitement of Matomo is returning.  What before seemed a very large, perhaps even insurmountable hurdle, now appears surmountable.  In order to jump the hurdle, however, Grammar Captive will have to relocate to a less expensive workspace.  This will release funds for the purchase of a scalable cloud as well as a private secure server that will facilitate the Matomo jump.  The scalable cloud will be great for initial growth, for two important reasons: one, visitors will not have to worry about delays in server speed; and two, Grammar Captive will can pay according to visitor demand.  More visitors mean more potential revenue, and a better ability to pay.

In the meanwhile, Grammar Captive has added several new features to the Sponsors Overview section under the menu item Visitor Profile in the Mainpage navigation bar.  These features include a section entitled Return Visitors and a new category of measurement under All Visitors entitled Visitor Interest.  This latter feature is of special interest because it allows potential sponsors to see how visits are distributed over the number of pages visited and the amount of time spent on the site with each visit.  And, yes, there is more.

In passing, certain inadequacies regarding Grammar Captive’s responsive design — internet jargon for how a webpage appears on a smartphone — have been overcome.  Firstly, on the podcast homepage clicking on Podcast Index under the Concept or Form and Use category automatically scrolls your viewport to the proper index.   Also, the width of the middle section no longer appears narrower than the rest of the sections (header, navigation bar, side-bar, and footer) when the entire site is viewed in stacked column mode — an important feature of responsive design.

Now for the bad news.  Unfortunately, the tedious formatting that went into the design of Grammar Captive’s first podcasts created many, many months ago must be redone, as the audio templates that resulted were lost when the iMac’s hard disk failed.  Development, like life, is rarely a straight line ….

Roddy

From Seattle, Washington, I wish Muslims around the world and especially my Saudi friends a wonderful celebration.

Roddy

The excitement has dissipated as the limitations of Matomo are becoming slowly and begrudgingly realized.

Matomo’s idea of share all or share none is a bit disappointing and goes against my own sense of what is good for business and Grammar Captive visitors.

No, this means neither that I have given up, nor that I will even abandon the software.  Simply more time will be required for me to achieve my goal.

In the meantime, additional Matomo fruits are beginning to appear as a new panel has been added to the Grammar Captive mainpage.  Look for the subheading Sponsor Overview in the navigation bar under Visitor Profile and click.

Also, on the list of good news:  podcast preparation will begin this weekend.  After all, in order to understand visitor activity there must be something there for them to be active about.

Have a great weekend!

Roddy

Although responsive design has always been a feature of Grammar Captive’s Podcast Hostpage, this has not been true of the Grammar Captive mainpage.  Now when you view the Grammar Captive mainpage in your browser on your smartphone, it appears more like a mobile application in column format.  The banner is still at the top, and the footer is still at the bottom, but the navigation bar, content-filled middle section, and sidebar are now vertically, rather than horizontally aligned.  This format will provide a much better mobile-user experience.

Roddy

Hard disk failure is hard.  But, as the saying goes, “The tough get going, when the going gets tough”.

It is a humble beginning, but the proof is in.  Find the entry Your Data and You under the Visitor Profile subheading in the navigation bar of the Grammar Captive mainpage.  Then, click and wait a moment for your data to fill.  There will be much more to come, but the foundation has been laid.

It is the beginning of Grammar Captive’s Looking Glass — your data mirror on the Grammar Captive website.

Roddy

Although technical problems with Grammar Captive’s host server prevent me from implementing this important first step for show, I have just broken the impasse in the creation of an online data mirror for  Grammar Captive visitors.

It is a win-win relationship for entrepreneur and visitor, for the entrepreneur shares with his visitors the data that he collects and thereby instructs visitor’s about their own behavior. It also plays up to the visitor’s vanity and thus discourages him or her from opting out.  Crushing government oppressions is thus circumvented.

I will post the first mirror as soon as it is ready for public display, and in it you will be able to see your own data profile.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Roddy

Although I am loathe to say that my study of Matomo is complete, I have learned enough to begin implementation.  For without implementation I have no way to test what I have learned, and there is so much more to learn.

With so many things to track and report and so many ways of doing each, selecting the proper combination of parameters and methods is time-consuming and surely an art that one must through doing.

Matomo is not just Google Analytics without Google.  It is far more. And, you will be very surprised when I begin posting some of the things that I have discovered.  For Matomo is not just about gathering and analyzing information from visitors, it is also about sharing this information with those from whom the information is gathered.

Roddy

 

I have completed the tracking documentation for Matomo and have moved onto the reporting documentation.  What started as the creation of a simple accounting script to count podcast and newsletter user-activity has turned into the mastery of Matomo tracking and reporting analytics.

Except for the fact that Matomo’s documentation appears to be written by English-speaking Germans in love with Japan I am absolutely excited about my decision to incorporate Matomo into the Grammar Captive website. On the bright side Matomo provides plenty of code samples that help tremendously to sift through its awkward English.  This said,  what I had hoped could be accomplished in a week is likely to take two or even three.  This extra effort, however, will allow me to share with you, the loyal visitor, some of what I, the dedicated developer, soon-to-be producer, and host would not likely otherwise be able to share quite so easily and plainly.

And, it is not just you with whom I will be able to share some of the back-end goings-on on the Grammar Captive website, but also advertisers who wish to customize their ads to better attract you, their potential customer, to their products.

Keep in mind I will only allow advertisers on this site that you would like to see appear, and I will not actively promote anyone’s product that I, myself, would not purchase.  What is more I will not allow this site to become an advertising bill-board of little substance.  This will be a win-win arrangement for everyone: you, Grammar Captive, and its eventual sponsors.

The nudge.online motto is surely becoming a reality:  Social change through commercial exchange!

Watch out Hong Kong!  The HKLNA Project is not dead!

No, I have not forgotten podcast production, but I have pretty much resigned myself to an autumn, rather than a spring launch.

Roddy

Having read the following words

“Your site had no issues in the past 24 hours”

sent from Grammar Captive’s host server, Lunarpages, for several days in a row strongly suggests that the measures recently undertaken to defend Grammar Captive against renewed cyber attack is working.

In the meanwhile progress is being made with the integration of Matomo into the Grammar Captive website.

The first page to be tracked will be Grammar Captive’s landing page — namely, www.grammarcaptive.com/index.html.  The tracking will combine two fundamental tracking concepts:  content tracking and event tracking.

The idea is to discover whether first comers choose the freeman or the captive, and whether those who choose the captive ever return to choose the freeman once they have viewed the captive video.

Roddy