Today is a momentous day, my bit on the drive has left me to go and live with someone else. Zafira and I had a rocky relationship to start with but we managed to work things out between us and, aside from the occasional spat, had a decent 18 month relationship.

Following the placement of a lonely hearts advertisement in Autotrader, a new suitor made himself known and Zafira has left me to go and live with Lee.

She proved to be an expensive indulgence, I reckon that Zafira’s street value declined by about £120 for every month she had her affair with me; on top of that my entertainment (maintenance) bills equated to another £90 per month. And the old girl could knock back the “go go” juice! Her bar bill not counted in the prior numbers.  

Mrs Baldwin, well she was glad to see the back of her! They never really got on.

I am more philosophical than melancholic; things are what they are, life moves on; I am not too depressed because I have a younger and more attractive model to keep me company. She made a Pass at me that I couldn’t ignore. She has her own estate, looks hot in red, goes some and is very accommodating.  In fact I have rather enjoyed introducing my new ride to the boys.

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I have written about the uncertainties of website traffic monitoring before; yesterday saw me actually write to Weebly (my site hosts) about some distinct anomalies I have recently observed in my visitor statistics.

Here’s what I wrote:

“Dear Team,
Please can you let me know if Weebly has changed the way it monitors/records website traffic. Over the last ten days or so I have noticed a significant difference in visit recording, not so much in terms page views but most definitely in terms of the number of visitors. I have monitored traffic constantly over the last three years and have not seen a change so dramatic. Thanks for your help. Kind regards Adrian”

Here’s what I got back:

“Sorry for the noticeable change in stats! We discovered we've been over counting Unique Visitors, sometimes accidentally counting the same person as multiple visitors. This means that going forward your Unique Visitor number will be lower than it was previously, though your Page View number should remain the same since we weren't over counting views, just the number of unique people who were making those views.

If you want to add tracking beyond our own (which is never a bad idea), we'd recommend Google Analytics. Just follow these instructions from our help center:”

I have to be honest, I am a bit disappointed, not only that Weebly could cock it up so badly (would WordPress make the same mistakes) but that my efforts are tangibly less rewarded. I am glad that I am not paying for enhanced Weebly statistics because if I was, I’d be demanding my money back.

It’s not all bad news though – whilst my overall level of visitors has dived in the last ten days (and has probably been wrong for three years), the engagement of those visitors that have arrived is much greater (the multiple of pages viewed per visit has shot up).

Outcomes:

• My faith in Weebly reduced but my belief in Google (I already use Analytics) boosted
• The value of my efforts to be questioned in the run up to the third birthday of my site (more on that to follow). Do the outcomes justify the investment?
  

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Blimey, it’s November already, this year has just flown by; Christmas beckons. As has become a tradition of sorts, a moustache is forming in recognition that November is also Movember. For another month of another year, I am about to look a bit stupid (well more so anyway).

Whilst the month has been so effectively renamed in the cause of testicular cancer care; I can’t help thinking that November would be much better referred to as “Remember”.

As I sit at my desk contemplating – it’s lunchtime so cut me some slack; the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh year draws ever closer. I am wearing my Poppy Appeal cufflinks and have a Poppy lapel pin attached to my suit jacket. Remembering the sacrifice made by so many across the world wars is surely important enough to consider renaming a month.

“Ember” is a constant element of “No”, “Mo” and “Re” and in that fiery reference was the spark of this idea.  The ember would even work for bonfire night (tomorrow) although I admit that the old rhyme “remember, remember the fifth of Remember” would need a bit of reworking.

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