Tech Group Report 2010-07-31

July 2010

Messages 1080 - 1472

July was a busy month for Tech. Topics under discussion were as follows.

Website

The home page slide show was tested for bandwidth, coding. Carol tested on dial up.

Membership stats and the Find a Groups data file now automatically updating.

Paul gave an overview of the website code, which needs to go on the wiki.

Google Analytics

June 2010 (Chris to check each month)

• freegle.in: 1,554 visits, up 18%
• mm.ilovefreegle.org: 8,791 visits (Message Maker)
• wiki.iLoveFreegle.org: 449 visits, up 11%
• www.iLoveFreegle.org: 45,118 visits, down 8%

Top five groups using the Message Maker:

• Leedsfreegle 4,302
• Cramlington 1,259
• Toon 1,040
• Wolvesfreegle 1,010
• Lancaster-Morecambe-Freegle 989

This will change as more groups use the MM and put it on their home pages.

The Send buttons were pressed 1,162 times:

• Yahoo 923
• Email 239

At www.iLoveFreegle.org these were the 3 most common page views:

• groups/ 39,496 29.95%
• / 33,072 25.08%
• /how-it-works/ 7,545 5.72%

On the Find a Group page:

• The Detect my Location button was used 24 times
• The Search button was pressed 7,965 times, with 3,454 different search terms.

These were the top 5 searches:

• ct12 6 - 205
• kendal - 74 59 0 0.00
• norwich - 63 47 0 0.00
• leeds - 62 48 0 0.00
• bedford - 54 37 0 0.00

Starting at result 1202, there seem to be quite a few US zip code searches, eg: 01027

Short Links

Shortlink improvements - Paul is working on moving shortlinking into the core website backend interface.

Wiki

Created the Tech Responsibilities page, which summarises what techy tasks happen (Chris)

Wiki page updated to show how to provide clickable links to the main Disclaimer (Chris)

Suggestion and offers of help on improving Wiki organisation (Jacky) Suggestion of orphaned pages as first task. Discussion on framework, page labelling and categories. Edward advising.

Concerns expressed and solutions on content and personal safety

Freegle Wiki and Wikipedia entry to be regularly checked for vandalism (Jon and Ollie)

Security of information issues discussed

Requests for help and offers made for wiki work and proof reading (Mike/Carol)

How to gain official status page updated (Paul)

Photos page started on Wiki

Stats strategy

Stats project starting (Alison Middleborough)

Discussion on defining purpose of collecting stats, what data to collect, how to collect it, how to display the information collected (? to be a working document on Wiki)

Advantages and disadvantages of using Google Analytics discussed

Suggestion of defining a “successful” group and collect data on basic characteristics of a group to see if there is a correlation

Discussion on keeping weekly membership stats and Group Birthdays

Group Home Page

MessageMaker, Help text, issues on email members trying to send emails via webmail and discussion on the need for Clear Form button

Advice given and requested.

Accessibility issues discussed and a suggestion made of creating a model home page

Support for Daily Digest added to the Quick Join Form

Task Items

We had a quick survey of what's on going, which we need to merge with our task list.

In Progress:

• Mass mailing improvements - finishing user role stuff, tweaking script, etc. (Paul)
• Nothing - doing plugin catchup (Edward)

Pending:

• WG reports, etc. (Paul)
• Shortlink improvements - moving of shortlinking into the core website backend interface (Paul)
• Code management improvement - figuring out dev to live promotion method, getting dev code setup for all web stuff, getting it all in SVN, documenting so others can use the new stuff (Paul)
• Join and post form (Edward)
• Easier Yahoo ID creation (Edward)

Would Like To Do:

• Freegle Facebook apps - map stuff to start out with, maybe message maker, etc.... as tabs for main Freegle fan page and local group fan pages

as well (Paul)

• Post republishing (Edward)

Miscellaneous

Tech Group Priorities page suggested:

Suggestions of

• changing platform
• evaluating Big Tent as alternative platform (Ray)
• making Yahoo more user friendly as a step towards our own systems
• providing a help button/member support

Email group called social-media@ created and added to the new group launch email list Alison and Mike recipients (Twitter and Facebook)

Issues re liability discussed in relation to work done by techies

GeekTalk was on Javascript this month!

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