Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-03-09 06:12:19 - Graham Ellis
Occasionally, I ask myself "is it worth it?". I write a lot of technical articles and add them to our website, and at times it feel like they're going into something of a void. It's rather like talking in a padded cell where any echo at all is notable by its absence.
But then I ask myself "how often do I write and say 'thank you' to the author of a web page that's given me a vital tip". The answer, is "far less than I should" - partly because I've moved on and partly because I don't want to take up someone's valuable time by sending him / her yet another fan letter.
But just occasionally, a note does appear posted through the obscure "rank and review" link, or by email, that says to me "yes - it IS worth it"". From my mail box the other day:
Oh, thank you, thank you. I've been struggling with a left join for... like forever, and your clear example just cracked it!
and that makes such a difference to me personally - thank you, Andrew, for writing that.
Looking around, I see and hear other evidence too that the material here is read, and services we provide are used. When we ask course delegates how they found us, it's often online. In Family Fortunes terms, that's the second most popular answer after "I was recommended to you". That online presence is bolstered, and our knowledge and background confirmed, by us providing good solutions to pressing issues even before a course is booked.
The count of visitors to a page is NOT necessarily an indication that the page itself is good / useful, merely that it's highly ranked by the search engines, or that it's about something which is a popular subject. I will admit, that an element of the ranking comes from how many people link in to the page, and how many are tempted by the few words that a search engine trails as a "teaser". So I'm only carefully proud of having over 1000 visits a day to our page that explains the difference between a JOIN to a LEFT JOIN, with fifteen other pages (yesterday's stats) in our technical article sections having over 100 visits each.
I have another measure too of the background work I put in - this one on the First Great Western Coffee Shop Passenger Forum that we seeded and host. Looking at my stats this morning, members have been logged in and online there for a total of 23,606 hours. At least 10 users have been there for over 20 days each. And that's not something that they would do unless it brought them something.
Finally, people I meet in real life comment on things I have written and they're usually very positive. In reality they may sometimes disagree with my more strident comments, but even if that's the case it's a heartwarming reminder that I'm not writing in that padded cell - it just feels like it sometimes.