WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-01-01 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[The gentleman who came to me with the SMS donation/raffle idea made a remark to me the one day that nobody on any website really knows how many visitors they actually get. It made me think hard.
I pride myself on the custom statistics engine I built for my website to monitor and track daily, monthly and annual trends. I store a lot of data and I can figure out quite a bit about what is going on, and I sit daily browsing statistics and hourly trends.
I have always had a fascination with numbers and interpreting numbers. So I set to work on various exercises behind the scenes in the last week, inbetween starting work on the rewrite – and I did some new statistical studies of my website to try and get answers to certain troubling questions in my mind.
Eventually I got some answers… but there are still some more answers I need to get.
I’ve been discussing for months the NEW LOOK of AfricanCrisis, but I’ve also been thinking as to whether I want to port ALL the existing content across. I am not convinced that EVERYTHING that currently exists should be ported across.
There are a number of things which were tried by me in the past which were “mildly successful” but not that important that they truly made a big difference in the long run – so those items will be “mothballed” for now because I don’t have the volumes of visitors to justify porting those features across.
The new focus of AfricanCrisis will be news, news, news, more news, and a killer search engine that works in ways you’ve not seen before.
In studying the statistics, and assessing the ways in which the volunteer system was successful, new ideas are forming in my head. Some ideas are based on suggestions various volunteers gave me – for example – the ability to comment on news articles. I have a particular idea in mind for interacting with the bulletin board, which will be quite different and unique.
There is a “hot idea” I have for the site… a highly automated idea… which has me extremely excited. You will not know what it is until you see it appearing bit by bit on the site… it will blow your minds when you see it. It will help to turn AfricanCrisis into an information centre for everything to do with southern Africa.
But I was sitting and brooding over these ideas and then new ideas hit me on how I can also merge these automated ideas with the volunteer system to produce something really wild!
I had experimented with a simplistic workflow idea for the volunteers, and with just a little bit of help, we did some nice stuff. But on the new site, it will be much more awesome.
I have also been looking at certain “successful articles” on the site which draw hits to the site each and every day without fail. There are a number of “perenial favourites” – articles which constantly draw new visitors. I have some special ideas for these articles which I’ve been experimenting with, but which I want to expand on.
All of us who deal with southern Africa are battling to get a voice, but even so there are many small Blogs and websites which have started up and which are doing good work – I have noticed a desire by some of these people to use the added power of AfricanCrisis to get exposure for themselves. I now actually want to focus on their needs. I want to accomodate people who do excellent work who want to use AfricanCrisis for exposure. e.g. The Right Perspective among others. So what I want is to build features specially for them to make announcements on AfricanCrisis and to post certain articles and items immediately without relying on me.
The mailing lists also need some revamping and improvement.
What I’m saying is that the New Look AfricanCrisis will embody ALL the current successful and popular aspects of the existing system, but other things will be left out for now. e.g. Petition, Activists – will not be ported across.
Many people have posted links in the past. But the links also became a mess. It will be incorporated into the news system.
I also need to solve the perenial problem I have of dealing with my email, which is a total abortion to say the least. I have some ideas however – some new stuff.
Another feature I will introduce later in 2007 is a Polling system – but it will be much more than just simplistic polls – it will be a fully blown SURVEY system which will ask readers all sorts of questions, and get their opinions on all sorts of things. My aim will be to also study the website visitors and to see what they like or don’t like and to get their opinions on what improvements they would like to see. I have a feeling that I also have a small group of non-white visitors and I want to study the thoughts of the different groups and the comments of the silent lurkers to see what they have to say.
So by using existing statistical analyses, surveys as well as just new ideas… expect AfricanCrisis to transmute in many ways by building on things which work… and by dumping things which don’t work so well.
A particular emphasis of AfricanCrisis will remain news and information – especially photographs. That is it’s “core business”. That will remain, but it will operate on a scale that will shock you! I only hope that the servers can handle what I’ll throw at them… and I am keen to ultimately create something which is ENORMOUS. Currently, we have about 9,800(43)+ news articles in the archive, but don’t be surprised, if we double that in one year or less!
The mailing lists will be the first thing which will drive people crazy from overload, so the mailing lists will have to change completely.
I am thinking of introducing a ratings system when news flows in. Between myself and the volunteers we will assess the importance of various news items and we will rate them accordingly. I’m thinking of changing the way the mailinglists work so that people are NOT overloaded. The mailinglists will remain committed to quality.
Much later, we could even look at letting people choose what category of mails they would like to receive! So you can tailormake the news you want.
Oh, and I forgot… the New AfricanCrisis will accomodate new languages where people can translate english articles into other languages. Among the first will be: Portuguese and German – but I’ll build it so that we can add any other languages we want.
Adding new languages is going to be a very important experiment for me. Let me tell you why. The vast majority of the Internet is english… However, there will be Portuguese, French, Spanish and German-speaking people who also will be doing searches on the web. They will be searching for certain words which only exist in those languages – and by having something available in those languages – I should be able to get hits from these “niche languages” – while facing less competition from other websites. I will need to build a special facility that will allow certain volunteers to do translations. I have wondered about “automatic translations” – e.g. using Babelfish. I’ve not investigated that yet. Its not perfect, but its also an idea. Is it possible to post an article in english and immediately have a bad, but usable translation into French, German, Spanish and Portuguese?
Here are some of the news sections I’m thinking of having:-
o AfricanCrisis,
o AfricanCrisis Humour,
o MiddleEastCrisis,
o EuropeanCrisis,
o AmericanCrisis,
o SouthAmericanCrisis,
o WorldWar III,
o The Editor’s Choice,
o AfricanCrisis in German,
o AfricanCrisis in Portuguese,
o AfricanCrisis in French.
I might consider splitting the AfricanSection into more detail – e.g. Zimbabwe, or Crime. We’ll have to see.
I want to ensure that AfricanCrisis also supports other websites and companies we are on good terms with – either via adverts or via links to particular news on their sites.
The volunteer system at the moment is not being used anywhere nearly as fully as it could be. But once everything is in place, the Volunteers will find that there is plenty for them to do and to contribute – and I will make it as easy as possible for them to do it. In many ways, I want to build on the concepts of FreeRepublic.com.
This will give you some idea of where my thoughts are going and are evolving.
As always, thoughts and input are welcome. There is a *LOT* of work that lies ahead for me, but I expect to sort everything out over the next 6-12 months. Bit by bit you’ll see the transformation taking place and bit by bit you’ll be directed more and more to the new AfricanCrisis mirror site. I expect the current look AfricanCrisis to quietly disappear over a period of about 18 months.
So I am looking forward to 2007 because it will be the most radical year of change that AfricanCrisis has had in its 5 years of existence yet. I mothballed StraightTalk and got everything else out of my way so that this year I will just focus 100% of my energy on AfricanCrisis where I will engage in some various serious surgery!!! AfricanCrisis will get more facelifts and plastic surgery this year than Michael Jackson ever had! Heck… maybe when I’m finished with it… AfricanCrisis will look like Michael Jackson used to!! Hehehehe. Jan]