Data Mining - Analyzing Metrics for RSS Feeds, Blogs + Websites

My new RSS Cases (case studies) blog has been live for about 2 months now, but it's officially live for about a week. The blog covers reviews of hardware and software related to content syndication, as well as case studies targeted at content marketers/ publishers and feed developers, as well studies of RSS Metrics (traffic analysis). As I've previously mentioned, the blog is a combination of my three older RSS blogs. Comments are enabled over there, so please feel free to comment.

Any general Data Mining discussions will take place somewhere on my WebGuru multi-blog, which will be going live within the next two weeks.

Technorati : atom, content syndication, rss, web feeds
Del.icio.us : atom, content syndication, rss, web feeds
Ice Rocket : atom, content syndication, rss, web feeds

This blog is about to be incorporated into a single blog called "WebGuru" that will be available at my new geekSchool/MathGurus Online website (http://www.mathgurusonline.com).

The WebGuru blog will contain posts about webmastering, web programming, and website analysis in general. This includes tips and techniques for Perl, PHP, XML, CSS, mySQL, javascript, data mining/ net metrics/ web analytics, geo-plotting, RSS and more. As such, most of my technical blogs (listed in the right-hand column) are being merged into WebGuru. [Some blogs are moving elsewhere, and will be announced later.]

WebGuru will contain both "prerequisite" and "problem-solving" topics. I do not like the terms "beginner" and "advanced" for categorizing programming tips, as they sometimes scare away people who are unsure. My categorization has nothing to do with your age or your programming skills, just your knowledge of a particular web topic. Basically, if you find that you don't understand one of my "problem-solving" posts, go have a look at some of the "prerequisite" posts to either refresh your memory or learn some basic skills.

For the first few weeks, there'll be an emphasis on "prerequisite" posts so that I can later get into more complex web programming. Just watch the geekSchool website (http://www.mathgurusonline.com) for a link to WebGuru. As soon as the new blog is ready, a "WebGuru" link will appear in the left-hand navigation. Please note that my older web programming/ analysis blogs will stay as is. No more posts will be made, and commenting will be shut off, but the URL will persist.

I have 60-70 posts sketched out and want to complete a few before I go live with WebGuru (hopefully later this week or early next week). For those of you that have been searching for Perl programming/scripting tips, I have over 35 Perl tips sketched out, with more in the works.

See you at geekSchool soon.

raj

Technorati : geek school, web programming, web scripting, webmaster school, webmastering tutorials

Hello everyone. I'm back from vacation. (Hey, I still worked 16-20 hours a day on my blogs and websites, so it wasn't really a vacation). I apologize for the batch posting of this message to all of my blogs, but I'm still madly reorganizing my blogs and this is the fastest way for me to communicate with readers... (The most current links to most of my blogs and website projects can always be found at my main website, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/.)

This is a somewhat lengthy post, but if you read any of my blogs with any frequency, my recommendation is that you read it. Otherwise, just visit keep visiting the blog(s) you're interested in :D.

I have several new websites, including a social awareness site, that I launched during the last two weeks. Some of them are still being tweaked (design and architecture). I'm also in the processing of moving some blogs, amalgamating other blogs, and creating a few new ones. I have nearly 200 blog posts sketched out across all of my blogs, but not all of these posts are in publishable format. So I do have tons of content planned, including some free ebooks, tutorials, and more. I'm just one person doing all of this, so please bear with me while I'm reorganizing.

By the way, I do try to check what people are searching for and then try to write a post relating to such topics (if I don't already have some such posts). I don't consider myself a blog network per se. I'll be straight out honest and say that I want to provide free information about several topics (food, technology, entertainment, and more), and then hope that (legitimate) ad revenue supports my writing and blogging habit. I'm a former print magazine publisher and editor, so blogs are my transition into the digital realm. My experience as a former search engine webmaster and as a programmer rounds my skills out. So blogging and websites are my ideal way to spend the day. So I'm making it my business to write about what you are looking for information on, provided it falls within my areas of interest or expertise. That said, there are a few blogs on my books that I'll be collaborating on with others, including family members, friends, and acquaintances.

So the scope of the "Chameleon Integration Systems" (CIS) blogs is expanding. I just have to keep it manageable so I can increase quality. The blog page templates I'm using will be changing on many of my blogs as I changing blogging platforms. For those that are curious, I currently use Blogger.com, WordPress and MovableType. I'll be trying out Mambo, bMachine, and others as well. Why all the platforms? Well, I have close to a decade of experience evaluating very high end ($500,000-$2,000,000) CMSes (Content Management Systems) for many large companies. Now I'm focusing on OpenSource solutions, specifically on software that can help bloggers set up both blogs and regular websites, plus online shopping. My "Chameleon Integration" motto is "Making the Internet Easy". So I'll be writing about my findings, for those that are interested.

Finally, just a note about blog posting schedules. I will not be posting on Sundays (I live in North America, time zone -0500., same zone as New York and Toronto). Sundays will be a day that I analyze stats, design new web pages, and sketch out the next week's worth of posts, and basically unwind. While I am aiming at posting daily to most blogs, I am still doing a lot of infrastructure work, so I won't be up to speed right away. I'll be posting some entries later today, but I probably won't be posting to every blog (new and old) until next week or the next. So I'll try to keep "current events" information posted at my main website, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/. I hope you'll visit again, and drop off comments about what you'd like to see information on.

cheers,

raj kumar dash

After several weeks of thinking long and hard about it, I've decided to stop posting to this blog. Instead, I'm spllitting and combining several blogs, including this one. The less technical posts about data mining, web analytics and net metrics will be posted to my BlogSpinner blog. The more technical posts that involve programming techniques and/or mathematics will be moved to my "Webmastering" blog, which is being readied for release on my new website, Math Gurus Online. This website, when ready, will contain all my Internet tech and programming blogs. I'll announce this new site, when it's ready, here on this blog as a final posting. In the meantime, I have a post over at BlogSpinner about a data mining-related concept called the "long tail" phenomenon, about how your articles and blog posts can earn their dues over a long period of time, even if they don't have a lot of initial readership when you first post them. Enjoy, and keep an eye out for the final post here.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://netmetrics.blogspot.com

Technorati : data mining, net metrics, web analytics, website metrics

I recently registered a couple of new domains - one for me and one for a client. I also took advantage of this very large, very well-known hosting company's special deal: buy a non-domain product and get a domain for a ridiculously low price. And the basic hosting plan for one year meant a similarly ridiculously low monthly cost. It ertainly beat what I used to pay only 5 years ago. Even my current consulting website's hosting plan costs about 3 times as much as the new website and has half the space and features. But what I realized after I'd paid up is that the new host doesn't give anyone access to their own server logs unless you get THEIR web stats package, which of course you have to pay for. It doesn't matter if you're paying US$3.95/m or $39.95/m, you have to pay extra.

Now, in the scheme of things, their stats package is not all that much more money. But I'm stubborn and it's the principle of thing that bugs me: Most host providers give you the server access logs as part of a normal suite of features. The total cost for both host providers ended up being almost the same, however, so my stubbornness is moot. The moral is, though, that if you plan to do your own data mining - which I prefer over cookie-cutter stats packages, then make sure your hosting plans offer log files at all - whether free or at a premium. You simply cannot do proper data mining without the raw logs.

BTW, this blog and all of my other techncial blogs will soon be moved over to a new "geek" site that'll have blogs, forums, free tutorials in PDF form, and private tutoring for certain subjects, at various knowledge levels. Once the new website is live, I'll announce it here and in my other tech blogs.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://netmetrics.blogspot.com

Technorati : acces logs, data mining, hosting plans, web server logs