Updates from January, 2010

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  Keeping up with the Tweets!

  Tracy West 4:18 pm on January 20, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  In our last conference call Emily showed us a really good way to have our Twitter posts post on our webpages by using HootSuite.com.  And it is a pretty cool program.  But I was already in the process of working with Intertech to build a widget that shows our Tweets.  Fawad came up with a perfect widget that was easy to set up through either a station Twitter account or a personal Twitter account.  You can see an example here:  http://www.newsradioword.com/ .

  

  It’s really easy to set up, you can choose your colors for the widget, the height and width, and once you’ve set up your list in your Twitter account, you just add the list to the widget.  Plus, once posted it’s easy for listeners to click on your Tweet and get to the persons account so they can start following!

  If any one wants help with this I know Fawad would love to help and I’m more than happy to explain it to folks.

  Tracy

   

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• 

  Blogging Examples

  Admin 12:05 pm on May 22, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  

  Heya all,

  I thought it would be a good time and reflect and show off what others are doing in the blogging space.

  Sandy has been talking to many of you recently of reaching out to our users and giving the “unduplicatable” content (is that spelled correct?).  What does he mean by this in relation to Blogs? Well, blogs give end users input into the mind of our talent in a unique way separate from the website.  They can be less formal and more about creating a sense of connection between your talent and their listeners.

  Lets start off with InterTech blogs.  The benefit of their blogs is that they are designed to look like part of your station website.

  • WROQ Anitra’s blog
  • WROQ Stoneman’s Blog
  • WXNT Abdul’s Blog
  • WNTR Ann Duran’s Blog

  The InterTech blogs are run off of WordPress MU, with few plugins.  So their upkeep is very straight forward.  If you have a person in charge of the blogging, who is new to blogging or needs few bells and whistles, these blogs work perfect.

  Next RadioTown Blogs.  Those are blogs hosted on our own RadioTown servers (this blog is run off of it).

  • Time with Kim (more of a website than a blog, but done in WordPress
  • Second Shift Show (Again, more of a website) 
  • Home Consignment run by The Wolf in San Francisco
  • WEZB blog in New Orleans
  • WKBU blog in New Orleans
  • Entercom Digital Blog

  You’ll see some diversity in these blogs.  That is because they are run off custom built templates that we upload into the RadioTown’s WordPress MU application.  If you’re familiar with WordPress Templates (also called themes) you can get your own or make your own.  For example, the New Orleans blogs, listed above, were built using this web tool.

  There are two reasons many of these blogs are run here instead of the ITM blogs within the station’s website.  First, they may not be associated with a single website (Kim or Alan’s blog for example).  So they can be independent in that regard.  Second they may require some more advanced plugins that are not available on the InterTech version of WordPress MU.  WEZB or WKBU for example.

  In both of these platforms you can get some good examples of how folks are using blogging to reach out in a personal way to their users.

  If you need to learn more about blogging, feel free to give us a ring.  Or just get started by going to the Blogging Implementation page on EntercomDigital.com.

  ~n

   
• 

  OneStats. Why have my page views dropped?!?!?

  Admin 2:19 pm on January 22, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: AWStats, InterTech, OneStats

  Heya all,

  I hope all of you have had a great three-day weekend.  I know I needed it.

  Recently InterTech has rolled-out the OneStat web analytics reporting package to all of us.  We have long needed a better site stats solution than their old AWStats.  However many of you have noticed the drop in page views associated with OneStat and wondered what was the reason.

  Well the reason is not a fault with OneStat.  It was actually a fault with AWStats.  To understand why, we need to understand AWStats and how it works.

  AWStats is an open source web analytics reporting tool, suitable for analyzing data from Internet services such as a web server.  The way AWstats gathers this information is by parsing and analyzing server log files, and then producing HTML reports for review.  By analyzing the log files this is where the fault lies.  When it reads a page view, it shows every page loaded from the server.  That is fine for static pages.  However, when a page is hosting another page through an iFrame, then that is where the fault happens.

  Intertech uses iframes for much of the box group content on your websites.  So, for example, if your home page has 3 iframes that load inside it, then the AWStats would count 4 total page views.  One for the home page itself, and one for each of the pages loaded in the iframes.  Neat huh?  Not really.

  Entercom Digital has been aware of this problem since before moving to InterTech.  We have worked with ITM to solve this as soon as  possible and in the mean time, work was done to remove all iframed pages from the reports with limited success.  What was needed was a different way to generate the reports.

  That is where OneStat comes in.

  OneStats method for gathering the data is different than the AWStas.  It uses Javascript to “ping” a central server of each page load that has the Javascript code added to it.  ITM has placed this code in the footer content of each website.  So any page that uses the footer box group will have the OneStats code and this be counted.  So this excludes all iframed pages, because those pages do not include the footer content.

  So I hope I did not bore you to death.  However, we felt a detailed explanation was due.

  Personally, I would prefer accurate reports as upposed to wrong reports.  Plus it is unique visitors that I think is the better number and that has changed little.

  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

  ~n

  —————-
  Now playing: Climber – Foxes