Good news

Good news everybody (did you detect the hint of Dr. Nick Riviera there?)! We’ve sourced a second web server for BritBlog, so over the next few weeks we’ll try and get this set up and deployed.

So what does this mean? You may remember me talking about getting a ping server up and running, so your blogging software can notify us when your blog gets updated.

This project stalled because I was concerned that the load (traffic) on this service could affect the performance of the rest of the site. Moving this onto a separate box makes loads of sense, and I’m looking forward to getting this going.

I’m also planning on setting up a web services interface (API) to enable developers and other web sites to use BritBlog data. This will take a good while, but if you have any thoughts on this topic I’d be keen to hear them.

Anyway, it will be several weeks before this new (actually 3rd hand…) server is up and running, but I’m quite excited about it so wanted to tell you all.

Finally, there is some more good news that I’m hoping to share with you next week, so watch this space…

BritBlog breaks the 4000 member mark!

I’m excited to say that BritBlog has now broken the 4000 member mark! We’ve currently got 4020 active blogs listed, and the directory is growing faster and faster each month. Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support!

Technoranki – traffic monitoring update

I’m pleased to announce that Technoranki now uses blog traffic data when calculating blog ranks!

I’ve made some tweaks to the algorithm too, so you should notice the ranking order change quite a bit over the next few days. This process takes a few days because the data in the BritBlog database has to be synchronized with the data in the Technoranki database.

So what next? Well, I’ve got a lot of work to do on the actual Technoranki web site (like add a search tool, add full chart listings, and enable ’self signups’), so I hope to start on this in the next week or so.

If you’re a BritBlog member and want to take part in the ‘Top of the Blogs‘ charts, sign in to your BritBlog account, and grab the Technoranki tracking code for your web site.

If you’re not a BritBlog member but still want to discover what your blog rank is, then please hold on just a little while longer

As always, any comments, suggestions or feedback you may have is greatly appreciated!

Technoranki – traffic monitoring

OK, the traffic portion of the technoranki blog ranking project is basically done. Traffic is being logged and processed, so all that remains is for the results to be actually be incorporated into the final score, and this is a simple matter.

At the moment there is still only a small percentage of bloggers using the code. This is fine (there is no pressure to join the project!), but if you don’t join in then you stand to loose your existing position within the charts. I’ve not set a date for the switch over to the upgraded ranking method. While I’m keen to do this soon, I don’t want to do it while we’ve only got a small number of blogs participating.

So, if you want to take part, please get the code and install it into your blog template. I’m hoping to generate some interesting graphs and reports based on the data we collect too, so the more people that take part the better

Technorati Tags: technoranki, blog ranks

Traffic tracking coming along nicely

Just to keep you updated, the traffic tracking component bit of the technoranki project is coming along nicely.

I’ve got a long car journey (as a pasenger) tomorrow, so will have a good chance to plan and prepare the final stuff. With luck I’ll get it written by Sunday.

However, there aren’t really enough people using the tracking code to make it fair for the results to be used in the blog ranks just yet.

For that reason, could I ask people to mention the technoranki project on their blogs? If you could encourage existing BritBlog members to get the code then that will really speed things along! You could link to this post for more information. Once this is going I’m going to open up the project to non-BritBlog members, so that should help smooth the results out too.

Anyway, any help with getting the word out on this would be greatly appreciated