On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:27:36 -0600, Milo van der Linden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Wow! > > Thank you all for the comments! Please forgive me for being late to the party, but I'd like to quickly inject a few comments of my own if that's okay. > A couple of (careful) conclusions: > //1//- Monitoring website behaviour might be useful (2 comments > including mine), but we prefer not to use Google (2 comments). Honestly, as far as the Cherokee project is concerned, tracking using behavior is a red herring. It's a distraction from what matters most: The number of active installations in use on the web. In other words, what should matter most is how many people are using Cherokee, not which pages they visit on http://cherokee-project.com on which day. That's not to suggest that understanding the behavior(s) of site visitors is a bad thing. It's just not as important as actively supporting and evangelizing the product. If people have a problem with the site, they'll either tell you or never come back again. And in my opinion the best way to ensure the former rather than the latter is to provide a proper and positive snapshot of community activity. Cherokee is an active web server project. But that's not immediately obvious when you visit the site. e.g. Benchmarks from 4 top level releases ago which provide nothing more than superficial benchmarks based on nothing but seemingly random numbers pulled from out of hat. No links. No "Here's the benchmark we used.". Nothing. That's a problem. > I have looked at some alternatives, taken in consideration that the > cherokee-project website generates apache compatible log files and came > across: > > * http://awstats.sourceforge.net (cgi/perl based, no database needed. > Basically, it is creating visual appealing views of the logfiles.) > * http://piwik.org/ (needs php and mysql..) > * Of course there is webalizer http://www.webalizer.com/ (C, w3c logfile > formats) > > Anyone wants to say something on that? Yes. Don't waste your time. Focus your time on selling Cherokee to that web serving masses. Cherokee is *fantastic* web server. But that's not what the current state of marketing material suggests. Instead it suggests "We're faster and better than everyone else, but we're not going to tell you why or provide way's for you to figure this out for yourself." Fix the above and you'll be amazed at how popular Cherokee becomes. > > //2//- Per version documentation, structured and with the option to > leave comments. > > A big concern here is that spam will flow the documentation. I > understand the project had some really bad experiences in the past. Write the documentation yourself. Don't trust other people to do it. They either won't, or -- just as you fear -- will use the opportunity to spam the hell out of you. > I will work out a plan for this and when it is more concrete, present it > here on the list. By all means. But please focus your time on fixing things from the inside out, not the outside in. There are bigger problems than that of not understanding the "patterns" of your site visitors. Fix the documentation/perception side of things and you might be amazed at how much your log files won't matter anymore. > Thanks again and I know my homework for now ;-) Let me just add that I am definitely in the mindset that if the Cherokee project can find ways to both document and promote themselves better, I am definitely interested in both using it and promoting it far and wide. I currently have Lawrence Lessig's media server running on Cherokee > http://media.lessig.org/ <. There are several of both his sites as well as several other sites I'd like to move to Cherokee as time allows. But it's really hard to convince people like Professor Lessig "the reason we need to use this web server is because of ..." when the only "..."'s I have available to me are ambigious benchmarks and hearsay about how much Cherokee *rocks* the casbah. Sincerely, A Cherokee Fan -- /M:D M. David Peterson Co-Founder & Chief Architect, 3rd&Urban, LLC Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: (206) 999-0588 http://3rdandUrban.com | http://amp.fm | http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2354 | http://news.oreilly.com/m-david-peterson/ _______________________________________________ Cherokee mailing list [email protected] http://lists.octality.com/listinfo/cherokee
