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I recently posted one of my silly side-projects to HN and it reached the front-page; I'm not really into analytics and user tracking, but I was curious about ho

I recently posted one of my silly side-projects to HN and it reached the front-page; I'm not really into analytics and user tracking, but I was curious about how much traffic was generated. So, I just awk/grep'ed Apache's access.log [1]. The results were about 23k requests from 17k unique addresses in a couple of days and then a longer tail for about a week, but haven't checked since. [1] https://tpaschalis.github.io/show-hn-sunlight-live/ https://tpaschalis.github.io/show-hn-sunlight-live/

AndrewStephens 7y ago
Thanks for posting your stats. Your results match almost exactly what happened when a (trollish) article of mine[0] was posted a couple of years ago. From memory, I got about 20K hits in the first 24 hours, and another 5K over the next few days, trailing off to nothing after about a week. It was exciting at the time but I had no evidence of any retention. [0] https://sheep.horse/2016/11/rip_apple_macbook.html https://sheep.horse/2016/11/rip_apple_macbook.html
- matt_heimer 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, do blog owners expect retention from a popular article? I just don't consume content this way. Unless the article is covering a long-term project I might be interested in (following game development from inception to release, etc) or the article sells something to me and I convert to a client, why would I start visiting a blog on the off chance that the author strikes lightning again? I much prefer curation services like HN.
  - jlokier 7y ago
    I think they hope for retention and therefore measure it, rather than expecting it.
  - AndrewStephens 7y ago
    If I come across I blog I like then I tend to add it to my RSS reader but perhaps I am in the minority. As for my blog, it is very unfocused and for every well-thought out post on technical matters there are half a dozen "check out these photos" posts.
  - tpaschalis 7y ago
    Hey Matt. Nice work with osdev.org, I'll be checking it out. Allow me to offer my point of view on your question. I initially started out this blog to improve my writing skills; I don't have any tracking, ads, analytics. I don't know (and don't care, tbh) if and how many people read it. It allows me to write down things I've learned, really cement that knowledge, and it's also hella fun! Many people that I know, which maintain their own blog are on the same page. Writing in public also allows other interesting people to offer their opinions, and start a conversation. This is the best thing I've got from it, helpful comments, criticism, and different viewpoints from strangers!
jsgo 7y ago
That's interesting. We use IIS, I wonder if there's a similar means for doing analytics at that level instead of the analytics library on the front end approach. I'll need to look into that a bit, thanks.
- klausjensen 7y ago
  There is, IIS can generate similar server side logs. :)
- mooreds 7y ago
  You can set up awstats for IIS: http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20150105-HowToConfigureAwstatsForWindowsAndIis.html http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20150105-HowToConfigu...
sova 7y ago
Ever seen https://www.die.net/earth/ https://www.die.net/earth/ ? I ask because it's really similar to OP's product Sunlight.live/ but came out in the late 90s early 2000s. It uses a satellite image of the weather, and a version of earth by day and earth by night to generate a composite that looks really sleek. Thanks for all the downvotes/fish.
- tpaschalis 7y ago
  Hey! Yes, I have seen die.net, and it was a source of inspiration. I wanted to build something original, use Python, learn about astronomy, and maybe help someone else with their ideas!
majewsky 7y ago
This matches up with what I saw. I don't have an access.log, but I took the total network traffic for that day and divided that by the size of one full page load including resources, which came out to about 10k to 15k page views for the first day.

AndrewStephens 7y ago

Thanks for posting your stats. Your results match almost exactly what happened when a (trollish) article of mine[0] was posted a couple of years ago. From memory, I got about 20K hits in the first 24 hours, and another 5K over the next few days, trailing off to nothing after about a week. It was exciting at the time but I had no evidence of any retention. [0] https://sheep.horse/2016/11/rip_apple_macbook.html https://sheep.horse/2016/11/rip_apple_macbook.html

matt_heimer 7y ago
Out of curiosity, do blog owners expect retention from a popular article? I just don't consume content this way. Unless the article is covering a long-term project I might be interested in (following game development from inception to release, etc) or the article sells something to me and I convert to a client, why would I start visiting a blog on the off chance that the author strikes lightning again? I much prefer curation services like HN.
- jlokier 7y ago
  I think they hope for retention and therefore measure it, rather than expecting it.
- AndrewStephens 7y ago
  If I come across I blog I like then I tend to add it to my RSS reader but perhaps I am in the minority. As for my blog, it is very unfocused and for every well-thought out post on technical matters there are half a dozen "check out these photos" posts.
- tpaschalis 7y ago
  Hey Matt. Nice work with osdev.org, I'll be checking it out. Allow me to offer my point of view on your question. I initially started out this blog to improve my writing skills; I don't have any tracking, ads, analytics. I don't know (and don't care, tbh) if and how many people read it. It allows me to write down things I've learned, really cement that knowledge, and it's also hella fun! Many people that I know, which maintain their own blog are on the same page. Writing in public also allows other interesting people to offer their opinions, and start a conversation. This is the best thing I've got from it, helpful comments, criticism, and different viewpoints from strangers!

jsgo 7y ago

That's interesting. We use IIS, I wonder if there's a similar means for doing analytics at that level instead of the analytics library on the front end approach. I'll need to look into that a bit, thanks.

klausjensen 7y ago
There is, IIS can generate similar server side logs. :)
mooreds 7y ago
You can set up awstats for IIS: http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20150105-HowToConfigureAwstatsForWindowsAndIis.html http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20150105-HowToConfigu...

sova 7y ago

Ever seen https://www.die.net/earth/ https://www.die.net/earth/ ? I ask because it's really similar to OP's product Sunlight.live/ but came out in the late 90s early 2000s. It uses a satellite image of the weather, and a version of earth by day and earth by night to generate a composite that looks really sleek. Thanks for all the downvotes/fish.

tpaschalis 7y ago
Hey! Yes, I have seen die.net, and it was a source of inspiration. I wanted to build something original, use Python, learn about astronomy, and maybe help someone else with their ideas!

majewsky 7y ago

This matches up with what I saw. I don't have an access.log, but I took the total network traffic for that day and divided that by the size of one full page load including resources, which came out to about 10k to 15k page views for the first day.