I created a website on freewebs.com which is a myspace like server for my volunteer program (www.salinevips.com) otherwise I have no website design experience what so ever. The president of my company was talking around getting a website for us and was getting price qoutes of $100 to $150 per hour etc. etc. I (for some reason) spoke up and volunteered my free time to building a site for us. After much research I settled on CC and purchased a bundle package. Not to give away my age I learned some programming in Basic back in high school, other than that I have no experience. After a week or so of pouring through the help files and scrolling your forums I got started. Now 6 weeks later I have been ordained "Webmaster" for our company (much to the sulling of our IT department) and have gotten rave reviews from our president as well as CEO's of our customers. (did I mention the raise?) When I first looked at your site months ago I seen the quote "We make webmasters". I am a testimonial to that very statement in every way. The software is user friendly, affordable and the forums and support are top of the line. My personal thanks to CC and all its staff for a job very well done. I look forward to a lifetime of updates, forums and friendships with a company I'm proud to have on my site.

www.cmcmaintenance.com

Chris Scott
CMC "Webmaster"


(just gives ya goosebumps dont it)

by the way: is there a program or add on like a hit counter, but not one that sticks out on the site itself, thats just gawdy to me, just something I can see how many hits the site gets over time. thanks again.

You may have access to a control panel with your website host provider. It is usually password protected and your hosting company most likely sent an email with the instructions. If you have CPanel or anything like it, they almost always come with some sort of "webstats" or other statistics package. Something like awstats or webalizer should be part of that, and those programs will give you loads of info on number of visits, how long they stayed on you site, how many pages visited and how many visitors per day.

I prefer to check the statistics of a website using cpanel rather than one of those "Site Counters" that make the website look unprofessional.

Congratulations on the "Webmaster" job. Now all you have to do is convince the company to let you work from home

Cliff

Thanks Cliff, I have found out my server uses a Windows panel called blueHALO, it was very informative, I guess, not really sure what its telling me. What is the difference between views, visits, hits ?

Scotty,

A "hit" is anything that has been visited on your pages. If you have 100 small images that show up on a page, they are only "linked" to the page. So the page is 1 hit, and each image linked to it also had to download the the page, they they are 1 hit each, making that one page count for 101 "hits" every time someone goes to it. Hit counters (the ones on the web page itself) can also be started at any number, so a page with a hit counter of 100000000000 hits could only have a few hits.

Page views count the number of times a page has been viewed, or the number of pages that have been viewed on your site. If this number climbs every month, that means that users are looking at more pages = good thing.

Visits is a count of how many times someone has come to your site. If that IP address leaves the site and comes back to it, that counts for 2 visits. This is a much more accurate accounting for how many times your website has been visited, and the number of visits will be way smaller that the number of "hits"

Unique visitors tracking (some panels have that) is a way to track how many different computers have visited your site. If a user visits every day all month long, they will only count for one unique visitor. Nice way to see how many different computers are checking your site.

A couple things to concider are the number of page views (more pages mean that you kept their interrest long enough to flip the pages) and the duration of time that the visitor has stayed on your site. If 98% have only been on there for 30 seconds or less, maybe its time to give them a reason to stay. If they already stay a while, that is good. If this visit time drops after a home page change, it will help you to see that you are loosing traffic to your site.

Wow, I gotta keep these answers shorter!

That's the end of the lesson for today.

Cliff

You keep doing what your doing Cliff, that was just the wealth of information I was looking for. Just another reason I am happy with CC and friends. Thanks again.

Hi Scotty!

I'm glad you're doing so well! I'm not sure if our higher-ups have seen your post yet, but I'll make sure they do.

...Hey Cliff, is that your dog?

Very cool to hear, Scotty! Naturally, most people who speak up are those who are unsatisfied. Your testimonial is great and it's nice to know the support is there for you.

Yes, my avatar is my helper dog Tiny. She is now 3 years old, but I got her just after a back injury put me off my feet. She was just 5 weeks old, and as she grew, she trained herself to fetch my shoes, mitts and hat (winter), and take me for lots of walks and gentle play.
I owe her for my being able to get outdoors and do even just a bit of what I could a few years ago. She deserves to be much more than just my "Avatar"

Cliff, is this your dog shopping? I know he's been a lifesaver, but this is gettin' ridiculous. haha j/k
http://www.coffeecuphelp.com/adam/images/dogshopping.jpg

Nice one!

I'm sure I could teach her. She will pick up a mit if I drop one, and fetches the paper for me. You should have seen her at Halloween! She had a small bowl with little bags of nacho chips that she was giving out. The kids loved it