NOVATOWNHALL

And welcome, MSN visitors!!

Long after the 2008 presidential campaign has been filed away, forgotten and all the shouting long since subsided, the one thing we shall ALL remember is the ungodly amount of traffic that Sarah Palin brought to our blogs. That, I assure you, is the story I will tell my grandchildren about.

Read the rest of this entry »

Suddenly this site is messed up in Firefox on my laptop - like the style sheet got changed, so now you can’t see the whole page in a window without having to scroll horizontally.

Anyone else noticing this?

Well, I did not change anything, and I can’t fix it. However it does still open up in Internet Explorer just fine, so I guess that is going to be the recommendation: Switch back to the evil browser if you can’t view NVTH correctly in Firefox.

The “new” Sitemeter has been unveiled and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work. Following the fiasco earlier this year I am somewhat hesitant to trust it, anyway. (By the way, anyone viewing this on Internet Explorer? I’d like to hear some confirmation it still works).

Does anyone know anything about other solutions for traffic measurement and referral tracking? I’ve got a backend program running on the server but it’s too much of a chore to have to log in and view it and it is not current (cron job that runs once a day I believe). I’d rather have something directly accessible from the Web.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds is soliciting the same info and chances are he will get more replies than me, so check that link periodically for updates.

I think Statcounter is another popular program but I don’t think it offers “open” stats (i.e. anyone can just click and see the stats without logging in) which is important to me for reasons of sheer laziness. And transparency.

FYI note to my fellow bloggers: If/when we switch away from Sitemeter, we will lose traffic data on all of the old Movable Type pages. Adios, sayanara, poof! all gone. It’s only 80-150 visits a day, and the vast majority are just Google searches, but please brace yourselves.

UPDATE V: Ok, I just killed Sitemeter. There should be no more errors. Hate to see Sitemeter go, but that seems to be the consensus fix around the Internets.

If you want to keep Sitemeter on your blog, read the rest of this post for instructions for your readers.

_____

FIX DETAILED BELOW TO MAKE INTERNET EXPLORER OPEN BLOGS WITH SITEMETER RUNNING!!

Switch to Firefox!
http://www.mozilla.com/

Hey, YOU: Just move that annoying Internet Explorer “Operation aborted” error window. Click on the top bar of it and move it out of the way without pressing the “Ok” button. Then, you will be able to at least read this post about the Internet Explorer error which is crashing it on many blogs tonight. It is not your fault, and it is not my fault, but it just might be Microsoft’s or Sitemeter’s fault. Switch to Firefox!
http://www.mozilla.com/

OK, here is the fix thanks to one of the magnificent lizards at LGF

The problem is an Internet Explorer conflict with Sitemeter, causing IE to give an “Operation aborted” error when trying to open a Web page with Sitemeter running. Obviously, this is going to affect the vast majority of blogs which depend on Sitemeter for their very mojo.

Procedure:

1. Open menu item: Tools…Internet Options
2. Click “Security” tab
3. Select “Restricted Sites”
4. Click “Sites” button
5. Under “Add this website to this zone”, enter “*.sitemeter.com” without the quotes
6. Click “Add” button
7. Close windows using “Close” or “OK”, not “Cancel”.

_____

UPDATE III: Whoa whoa whoa Nelly! Charles of LGF has identified this as a Web-wide problem. So it ain’t us. Jacob, I will restore your graphic.

UPDATE IV: Rumor has it the reason so many blogs are suddenly causing errors in Internet Explorer lies in a conflict between Internet Explorer and Sitemeter. Must have been a silent update from one of them. Well, I can tell you right now I ain’t throwing Sitemeter under the bus because it is one of my primary enjoyable timewasters, so IE - out the door with you!!

Human race: Switch to Firefox!

_____

As luck would have it, I am about to be away from the Internet for an extended period and the site has a technical issue: INTERNET EXPLORER SUDDENLY IS NOT WORKING TO BROWSE THIS WEB SITE. I have no idea why, except that something got changed - some code in a comment or post - since earlier today, and I may not be able to figure it out until a week from today.

In the meantime, readers may be forced to switch to Firefox or another browser. You will be grateful you did.

UPDATE: I have a little time to try and fix this, and the only thing I know to do is start deleting stuff until the problem stops. I apologize in advance if I happen to delete something you happen to love.

UPDATE II: Ok, I have sure deleted some stuff and IE still will not allow this site to be browsed. Looks like Redmond, we have a problem. After about 8:00 am tomorrow I won’t be able to fix it for at least a week. SWITCH TO FIREFOX!

Holy Hot Columnists, Batman, Michelle has done it for us again!

As a lower tier, C-grade blogger, I can tell you the one thing that makes it all worthwhile are those unexpected moments when you get a “spike” in traffic for absolutely no reason, and a whole bunch of people visit your site more or less accidentally. Ninety-nine percent of blog “marketing” consists of trying to pull various tricks that cause visitors to click on a link to your site. Whether through clever identification of popular google searches, or just trying to convince Glenn Reynolds you’ve written something worthwhile (tried many times and like the cycles of the planets it has ALWAYS proved beyond my control - if it ever works, I will know death is at hand), the basic idea is “Ha! Made you look!”

Once again, the driving force is my NRI photo of Michelle, because MSN has seen fit to make her their featured “popular search” of the day (click her photo then “See also: Images”). There she is, beginning of the second row.

(More form NRI, here and here.)

I know the vast majority of these folks will never visit here again, but occasional flood of gawkers is nice.

Thanks, Michelle! If you ever want me to return the favor, I’ll be happy to provide a head shot which you can publish with abandon.

UPDATE: Approaching 2500 visits. That’s a couple grand at least from Michelle, and counting.

Y’know what? When the Malkinator brings that kind of traffic, the lithesome one goes back on the front page again.

In keeping with our tradition here at NVTH of staying at least two years behind any given technological curve, I can hereby announce I am marching boldly into 2006 by incorporating Twitter into this Web site. What this means is, I can now send messages from my cell phone to the Twitter Web site, and theoretically they will be forwarded here to the “Twitter Updates” script at the very bottom of the righthand column.

I had to put it at the bottom so in case Twitter is down, as seems to be the case right now, the rest of the blog will still load in your browser.

Anyway, the point of Twitter is to be able to constantly broadcast the answer to the question “What are you doing?” I’m not totally clear on the appeal of that concept, because I can’t imagine anyone caring a whit what I happen to be doing at any particular time, and I know I sure as hell don’t care what any of you are doing at any particular time, but there it is.

One possible use I do see is being able to flash updates on things that people might happen to care about, like “I just saw a boatload of Chinese soldiers disembarking under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge” or possibly results from tomorrow’s RPV Convention.

Unfortunately, none of it will be too easy because I literally do have to use a cell phone - don’t have a Blackberry so the fastest I can create messages is by plodding through the telephone keypad.

So if Twitter is working, and I have anything of value to share, you might find some information of interest at the bottom of the right column of this blog, so please check back periodically.

UPDATE: Here is a video about Twitter.

Looking through our referral logs last night I learned that approximately 33% of our traffic at NVTH Blog is because of people googling this photo I took of Michelle Malkin last year. (Here is a larger version for those of you with poor eyesight.) Now, is that really “googling” or should it be termed “g-ogling?”

Anyway, special thanks to Michelle for wearing that skirt and those boots at the NRI Summit. We’ll take the traffic any way we can get it.

UPDATE: On second thought it looks like there’s just something weird going on right now. That photo is a year and a half old and in the past 24 hours there has been a huge increase in the number of requests from images.google.com. Michelle’s birthday maybe? I’m stumped.

Hmm, not a lot of new postings here lately while I’ve been traveling, fellows.

You know what that means.

Credit to the original.

Dang, it sure is quiet around these parts, with precious little BLOGGING going on. Well, my excuse is work and domestic responsibilities. And I know all our other bloggers have their own unique excuses.

But as they say, the key to keeping up the traffic level is to have continuous new material on the front page. So, in the interest of maintaining some semblance of currentness, I am going to make a command decision and establish the tradition that whenever the updates at the NOVA TownHall Blog are in danger of reaching a two day lapse, I will post my favorite ak-47 video again.

So here it is.

My guess is, you will be seeing more of it. (Credit to the original).

It appears we will reach a major milestone of visitor traffic today, and here inside the glass-enclosed nerve center of NOVA TownHall Headquarters you can be sure the fairy cakes are in the oven, the malt duck is icing down, and there are hours worth of ammo in the hall closet.

Yes, we are nearing our 200,000th visitor, and barring a power outage or rapid onset of global cooling, it will occur sometime today, Thursday, March 6, 2008.

I can’t tell you how proud I am of this moment and how far we have come. Back when we started this humble endeavor in Sept 2005, at the instigation of the notorious John Grigsby, it was just me, my good friend Paul, and the mysterious Yooper. (Sorry, their names don’t show up on those early posts anymore because I blew out Movable Type a few times - if the author ain’t Joe, it’s one of them). We finally hit the big time when the incendiary, sexually ambiguous Sophrosyne joined the crew in February 2006, and the trenchant Singleton shortly thereafter. And then, about two years ago, we won the distinction of Worst Blog from local heavyweight blog Too Conservative’s majordomo Vincent - an award we still esteem above all others.

But here we are in 2008, firmly in the big time. What a ride it’s been.

Most impressively, with our milestone of 200,000 visitors in 2 1/2 years, we have almost achieved the traffic level Glenn Reynolds gets in one hour. That, my friends, is nothing to sneeze at.

To what can we attribute this massive level of achievement? Well, from analyzing the data, I believe about 40% of our traffic is directly attributable to my legendary photo of the sultry Michelle Malkin, and another 40% to Sophrosyne’s remarkably perceptive take on the date of the 2008 Republican Convention. Nailing that date was a huge coup for NVTH. Thank goodness for Google.

And of course now with the outstanding additional line up of Jacob, Jack, Brian Withnell and ACTivist - and the memorable amnesties we have provided for our excellent liberal visitors - well it’s no surprise NOVA TownHall is one of the most wonderfully, oddly configured neighborhoods in the entire Internet, which none can deny.

Ah, sweet smell of success. Flowers and kisses to you all.

UPDATE: 6:50 pm Thursday. Only 166 to go! Besides Malkin or the Republican Convention, I’m wagering the most likely Google searches to bring us to the 200k mark are “Huckabee Logan” and “Angel Ann Coulter.”

UPDATE II: Well heck, whaddaya know? Our 200,000th visitor was not a Google search at all but just one of our regular visitors, someone coming in via AOL. They stopped by at 8:34 am this morning and stayed for 1 min. 17 sec. Thanks, AOL person, whoever you are.

It appears the need has arisen to access an archive of our Zimzo’s writings here. With the search feature in the old blog broken, we are left with Google, which is probably better anyway.

Here it is.

Quite the trip down memory lane.

I just realized this blog looks completely screwed up when viewed via Internet Explorer. Mainly, the sidebars are completely whacked. I have no idea why that is because the elements I am using are pretty much out-of-the-box Wordpress.

(I think you Mac folks are fine using Safari.)

I could research and try to fix this IE problem, but a far superior solution would be for all of you - and I do mean ALL of you - to stop using Internet Explorer and instead use Firefox. With a reasonable broadband connection it will take all of five minutes to download and install the software, and even with DSL or dial up it is worth the effort, so if you are an IE person please go do that right now.

For anyone who has not already gotten a whiff of Vista, let me remind you what I have been saying for years: The less Microsoft software you use, the better.

Firefox is a far superior browser and after switching you will want to buy me steak dinners once a year for the rest of my life.

And you know what? I just might let you.

Once again, we attempt to reinvent the NOVA TownHall Blog. This was a decision based less on whimsy than expediency, because the Movable Type version was running too slow on our new host.

And in the brave, incisive, hard-charging new world being forged here by the NOVA TownHall authors and commenters, “slow” simply deserves no place in our collective vocabulary.

This version of the blog, you will note, resides right at the NOVA TownHall site root, because over the past 4+ years of existence NVTH has evolved into a blog first, and everything else second. If we start having meetings again, we can certainly advertise and organize them here.

For the time being, both the old-new NOVA TownHall Blog and the new-new NOVA TownHall Blog will operate concurrently. This may be confusing, but I think it will be the good kind of confusing. Based on past experience, upgrading the blog is nothing if not a cluster-you-know-what, and by letting them both run we should minimize the downtime. This also buys me a lot of time to make sure comments work, spam gets deflected, the sidebars get rebuilt, and I learn WordPress. Eventually, all the new, exciting action will be here.

I am especially encouraged by the fact that installing WordPress, compared to installing MT, is like making nachos compares to decoding the human genome.

Thanks for putting up with yet another transitional phase here, and let’s hope this is the last one for a few years.