Grammar Captive

From Seattle, Washington, I wish Muslims around the world and especially my Saudi friends a wonderful celebration.

Roddy

The excitement has dissipated as the limitations of Matomo are becoming slowly and begrudgingly realized.

Matomo’s idea of share all or share none is a bit disappointing and goes against my own sense of what is good for business and Grammar Captive visitors.

No, this means neither that I have given up, nor that I will even abandon the software.  Simply more time will be required for me to achieve my goal.

In the meantime, additional Matomo fruits are beginning to appear as a new panel has been added to the Grammar Captive mainpage.  Look for the subheading Sponsor Overview in the navigation bar under Visitor Profile and click.

Also, on the list of good news:  podcast preparation will begin this weekend.  After all, in order to understand visitor activity there must be something there for them to be active about.

Have a great weekend!

Roddy

Although responsive design has always been a feature of Grammar Captive’s Podcast Hostpage, this has not been true of the Grammar Captive mainpage.  Now when you view the Grammar Captive mainpage in your browser on your smartphone, it appears more like a mobile application in column format.  The banner is still at the top, and the footer is still at the bottom, but the navigation bar, content-filled middle section, and sidebar are now vertically, rather than horizontally aligned.  This format will provide a much better mobile-user experience.

Roddy

Hard disk failure is hard.  But, as the saying goes, “The tough get going, when the going gets tough”.

It is a humble beginning, but the proof is in.  Find the entry Your Data and You under the Visitor Profile subheading in the navigation bar of the Grammar Captive mainpage.  Then, click and wait a moment for your data to fill.  There will be much more to come, but the foundation has been laid.

It is the beginning of Grammar Captive’s Looking Glass — your data mirror on the Grammar Captive website.

Roddy

Although technical problems with Grammar Captive’s host server prevent me from implementing this important first step for show, I have just broken the impasse in the creation of an online data mirror for  Grammar Captive visitors.

It is a win-win relationship for entrepreneur and visitor, for the entrepreneur shares with his visitors the data that he collects and thereby instructs visitor’s about their own behavior. It also plays up to the visitor’s vanity and thus discourages him or her from opting out.  Crushing government oppressions is thus circumvented.

I will post the first mirror as soon as it is ready for public display, and in it you will be able to see your own data profile.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Roddy

Although I am loathe to say that my study of Matomo is complete, I have learned enough to begin implementation.  For without implementation I have no way to test what I have learned, and there is so much more to learn.

With so many things to track and report and so many ways of doing each, selecting the proper combination of parameters and methods is time-consuming and surely an art that one must through doing.

Matomo is not just Google Analytics without Google.  It is far more. And, you will be very surprised when I begin posting some of the things that I have discovered.  For Matomo is not just about gathering and analyzing information from visitors, it is also about sharing this information with those from whom the information is gathered.

Roddy

 

I have completed the tracking documentation for Matomo and have moved onto the reporting documentation.  What started as the creation of a simple accounting script to count podcast and newsletter user-activity has turned into the mastery of Matomo tracking and reporting analytics.

Except for the fact that Matomo’s documentation appears to be written by English-speaking Germans in love with Japan I am absolutely excited about my decision to incorporate Matomo into the Grammar Captive website. On the bright side Matomo provides plenty of code samples that help tremendously to sift through its awkward English.  This said,  what I had hoped could be accomplished in a week is likely to take two or even three.  This extra effort, however, will allow me to share with you, the loyal visitor, some of what I, the dedicated developer, soon-to-be producer, and host would not likely otherwise be able to share quite so easily and plainly.

And, it is not just you with whom I will be able to share some of the back-end goings-on on the Grammar Captive website, but also advertisers who wish to customize their ads to better attract you, their potential customer, to their products.

Keep in mind I will only allow advertisers on this site that you would like to see appear, and I will not actively promote anyone’s product that I, myself, would not purchase.  What is more I will not allow this site to become an advertising bill-board of little substance.  This will be a win-win arrangement for everyone: you, Grammar Captive, and its eventual sponsors.

The nudge.online motto is surely becoming a reality:  Social change through commercial exchange!

Watch out Hong Kong!  The HKLNA Project is not dead!

No, I have not forgotten podcast production, but I have pretty much resigned myself to an autumn, rather than a spring launch.

Roddy

Having read the following words

“Your site had no issues in the past 24 hours”

sent from Grammar Captive’s host server, Lunarpages, for several days in a row strongly suggests that the measures recently undertaken to defend Grammar Captive against renewed cyber attack is working.

In the meanwhile progress is being made with the integration of Matomo into the Grammar Captive website.

The first page to be tracked will be Grammar Captive’s landing page — namely, www.grammarcaptive.com/index.html.  The tracking will combine two fundamental tracking concepts:  content tracking and event tracking.

The idea is to discover whether first comers choose the freeman or the captive, and whether those who choose the captive ever return to choose the freeman once they have viewed the captive video.

Roddy

The dysfunctional checkbox that allows users to choose whether to receive or not receive a Matomo tracking cookie has been largely resolved.  The internal server error is gone, and one no longer has to manually refresh the page and find one’s way back to the checkbox to see the change.

Although I will continue to work with Matomo in resolving the intermittent blank screen that still appears, users can now take comfort in seeing their desired change take effect immediately.

I will now begin configuring Matomo to do what I have been hoping all along:  provide Google Analytics without Google. The dysfunctional checkbox was an important barrier that needed to be overcome before employing Matomo — user privacy is paramount at Grammar Captive!

Hooray! Hooray! Further development now appears possible.  Look forward to a productive week ahead.

Roddy

Having blocked a total of nine IP addresses and implemented the already mentioned defensive measures, user usage has returned to normal.  The crisis appears to be over.

Now aware of the potential for further crisis a daily usage check will be made and corrective action taken when necessary.  It is a small price to pay for security — this despite the enormous amount of time recently spent to understand and correct the problem.

Unfortunately, the mal-functioning, opt-in/opt-out, checkbox for tracking cookies has still not been resolved, but a solution may be forthcoming — a re-installation and relocation of the Matomo software.  Unfortunately, this, too, will be very costly in terms of time, and I am reluctant to proceed until I am sure that it is the cause.

Roddy