Technology and Wisdom = Better Humanity
We should be wiser in using technology for human happiness.
Tuesday 12 June 2007, 2:00 AM
Why there is no traffic on ZDNet.co.uk?
I posted an article a week ago on the Vista Upgrade Blog, and that article is still on top of the column, meaning that nobody added an article.
Either bloggers have nothing to say, or are discouraged by the small traffic.
I have a theory to explain the phenomenon:
The server is slow, and visitors are not allowed free entry into the site.
I placed a link to my first article on linuxtoday.com and in a few hours there were 10 comments. One of the comments said Why do you blog in such a difficult site? or something similar.
It is not fun to blog at ZDNet.co.uk
I expect comments on this. Let us shake it.
PreviousComments on this post
Thanks for the post Mario, you raise an interestnig issue. First I'll share a couple of numbers, then my general thoughts. Our audited traffic is 10.5 million page impressions a month from 2.1 million unique users, with over 500,000 registered members (that number is growing at about 5,000 a week). Whether you want to call that small or big I'll leave to you. Whichever it is, like you I would like to expect more activity in the blogs although some already clearly do very well such as this Linux challenge by Xwindowsjunkie.
We launched the Vista Upgrade blog about a month ago along with two others (Sentry Posts and On The Road) as a service for our readers in the IT profession to share their thoughts and experiences on specific issues. Have we made them as easy to use as they should be? Have we made them as easy to find as they should be? Is the server as fast as it should be? You tell us. The answer I think I'm hearing from you is probably no. I'd be interested to hear what anybody else thinks, especially if they have thought about blogging or replying to a blog but have been put off by something about the site.
I do believe that if people are to use the tools we build then we do have to make them easy to use, and the resulting content easy to find. We're currently looking at improvements to the blogging tool (and other parts of the site), which I'm happy to share with you. We're also looking at how we can make the blog posts easier to find. I'd argue that it's relatively easy with a single-issue site like linuxtoday.com, and it is an issue that we face given the large number of subjects we cover. We're open to any suggestions you have.
I agree about the slow speed of the servers. I usually average about a 10-15 second wait for a page to load. These days, that's crazy.
I mainly come here for Rupert Goodwin, anyway. Knowlegeable and entertaining, that's our Rupert.
This comment has been deleted at the users request
I have to say that ZDNet is probably the slowest site that I browse. Admittedly I am using a rather old slow PC, but compared to every other site that I browse, it still retains last place. However, much of the waiting around for the page to load seems to come from external links, i.e. the adverts according to the little 'waiting for...' comment on my browser, so may not all be ZD's fault...although the multiple embedded features (such as flash) on every page makes us users with slower PCs more likely to move on before the entire page loads, not everyone has a 5GHZ duo core with T1 connections (although we probably should!).
Also the comment submissions process is really long winded, having to load the comment page, then preview, then back as you forgot to add a title, then preview again and then submit is a rather length process compared to a forum type interface.
I agree the speed is pretty poor at the moment.
This is Eric Everson, Founder of MyMobiSafe.com. I read this thread and felt that I should interject a few thoughts on the mater. I am not here to complain about server speed or page loading speed as there are things that can be done to remedy those concerns with relative ease. I would like to say however that I too would like too see more blogging on the site. I try to do my part by posting regularly, but I find often that my blog entry was the last in the section and I hate to “stack” my blog entries on top of each other. I would encourage more users to become active bloggers because I love reading the unique perspectives people share through our community forums/blogs.
I understand the limitations that the ZDNet.co.uk Team face due to the myriad of material that the site provides. As a mobile security professional, I am glad to blog through the Sentry blog portal but I would also like to see additional blogging portals open for our user community. One thing that I truly enjoy about the ZDNet.co.uk site is the community atmosphere that is so obviously fostered here. Karen does a great job of addressing any issue and question and everyone else here seems to be embracing the changing social networking aspects of the web. I am thankful for a place that fuses the latest in business and technology with the evolving social networking culture of the web. As members we need to blog more (and it sounds like many of us need to update our processor or bandwidth) : )
Cheers,
Eric E.
I was only comparing it with the U.S. ZDNet. The latter is not necessarily faster because it goes through several proxies, but it has lots of visitors, who come and go informally.
Things are a lot more formal here.
Well, I believe it is a question of time, until we feel less lonely, talking to the wind.
Regarding the site format:
Blog Entries should default to a chronologically ordered index format, with title, author, number of comments and about 3 initial lines of the articles. It would be much easier to browse and recognize changes.
Hi, I'm Gerry and have only been using forums for 3 months. I was attracted to this by an article. I pay to be a member of a property forum website, and that has a huge number of posts. I also joined 3 free forum sites of a more general nature, and they have many posts. I remember doing a username and password for this site, but in this reply, I was asked for neither. Is it open, or only open to registered users?
P.S. When I hit the submit button, it did ask me for my u/n and p/w. That's OK. I guess casual browsers can't be bothered to register.
A reader at LinuxToday.com said:
Why would you blog where registration is required to comment? I've enough authentication tokens and refuse to acquire more when there's no need
and I justified that it was my first article in this blog.
The question of whether to require registration for comment is one you have to think hard about when you set up a space for an online community. Our thinking is that it cuts down on the "noise" enough to outweigh the risk of losing some valuable contributions. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts; as Matt says, we're open to feedback and suggestions. (Thanks to Eric for the appreciation! We are really committed to this approach, including being responsive to members.)
I do not know what is the secret ingredient that makes the ZDNet U.S. more visited. And the nature of comments has improved there; less trolling or unpolished comments than before. I have tried to augment the traffic here, but I notice that most of the time new blog postings stay with 0 comments for a long time.
Nobody seems to have noted that the uk site says BETA near the top, so maybe a lot of people are reluctant to proceed because of that. Once you've had problems with something labelled BETA, you tend to avoid it. Yes, the site seemed a little slow to me, too, especially considering I'm surfing on a DSL that's currently 3.0 MBPS, going to 6.0 as of next week. I did not try to comment on your article before, but I had no problem doing so here, or accessing the original site as a visitor for that matter.
