I am wanting to upgrade a site to universal analytics, which is a simple process. But it will be too time consuming to go though our content management system and pick out every single copy of the old code "_gaq.push..." etc (I will be doing my best here but we have a massive amount of legacy HTML in our content management software).
I am wondering if one of the older code snippets appears for our customers will it cause a javascript error in the browser or will universal analytics just ignore it. And if we get a javascript error on a page we will stop the site working on that page for users, as we use a lot of javascript on the site.
In phase 1 of the switch to universal analytics https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/#phase-1 Google mentions that the older code will be valid for a period. Can we use a bit of both or do we have to stick to one or the other.
Here are a few helpful resources pertaining to the migration process, which will hopefully answer your questions.
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/universal-analytics/
http://www.swellpath.com/2013/11/migrating-upgrading-universal-analytics/
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032400?hl=en
Generally speaking, it's better to have just one version of the code running so that your data is consistent. Given this opportunity, you should also consider using GTM which streamlines your analytics management process. It may take a slightly larger effort but it pays off in the end.
Hope this helps.
Related
How could I test (suggest me the test techniques, or what to test) if the latest version of Wordpress (4.1) is stable for building a company presentation website?
this is more like a kind of assignment, not something real that I have to conduct.
my initial thoughts: the platform is already released, so I would suggest making "domain testing", testing for boundaries and testing for high loads on the system... what do you guys think?
thank you!
For stability testing on the Wordpress you can use some useful tools:
1. WebPageTest
This is one of the most helpful tools available online to help you test the performance of your website. It runs your site from multiple locations around the globe using real browsers and at real consumer connection speeds.
The only disadvantage this site is that you sometime have to wait in queue for other tests to be completed.
http://www.webpagetest.org/
2. Pingdom
Pingdom speed testing is not only free, but also gives you full information about your site’s performance including load time, page size, and a detailed analysis of page. You can also measure how much time it takes to load all the elements on a specific page, you can then use that information to speed up your website.
Other features include testing from multiple locations, performance grade & tips, ability to share the results with your friends, and more.
Apart from all the great features, Pingdom also saves your performance history, so you can review it later and see how things change over time.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
3. GTMetrix
Another great tool for measuring your site’s performance and fantastic tool to have in your arsenal. This site not only gives you all the useful information you need to develop a faster and more efficient website, but also compresses the images that are slowing down your site for you.
This feature is quite useful, but if you have a ton of images, then you would be better off with Smush.it WordPress plugin.
http://gtmetrix.com/
Also you can use WordPress Split Testing Tools.
If you’re using WordPress, then it’s worth considering a tool designed specifically for the platform. While some of the tools in our last roundup (such as Google Content Experiments and Optimizely) also work with WordPress, here are a few more.
1. AB Press Optimizer
AB Press Optimizer allows you to test variations of page elements such as images and buttons and content, such as headlines and text on a self-hosted WordPress site. To use it, you need the plugin plus the ability to use shortcodes (though you can use PHP if you wish).
You can run and get real time reporting on unlimited experiments with unlimited visitors for the $39 personal license, though you will have to upgrade if you want additional support.
https://abpressoptimizer.com/
2. AB Theme Testing
If you’re running a WordPress site, sometimes you need to get back to design basics and test a couple of themes. That’s where AB Theme Testing is useful. It integrates with Google Analytics so you can see your data in your Analytics account. This plugin costs $19. The developers have used it to tweak their own site, as this case study shows.
https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/ab-theme-testing/
3. Simple Page Tester
Simple Page Tester says it’s an SEO friendly plugin that allows users to setup quick split tests. It works well with caching plugins and is available for free. You’ll need to upgrade to premium to work with custom post types, PHP template tags, Javascript and shortcodes and to get more in-depth analytics.
https://simplepagetester.com/
I'm trying to better understand user experience by seeing what users are doing on the site. There are various tools out there that will work to track the clickstream, and record pageviews, generating heatmaps etc.
However, they don't seem to work with meteor. Since meteor is not even using ajax - it's data over sockets - and I think the tools do not support this newfangled magic.
I was wondering if anyone has found a remote recording/click tracking tool that works with meteor?
For example:
- http://www.luckyorange.com
who have a note here about hooking into the browsers XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open but that's not gonna work with meteor and more socket level protocols, it seems.
mouseflow.com also just recorded a white screen.
crazyegg.com doesn't even support ajax.
There are some other mobile specific tools like:
- http://www.uxrecorder.com/
but that would require native SDKs. First off I just want to put this up for the web.
There's one company https://lookback.io/explore who actually develop their desktop site in meteor, but they are mobile/iOS only :(
it's quite time consuming to try these out so it would be good to know anyone else's experience, eg:
http://www.getapp.com/alternatives/mouseflow-application
How are people doing remote usability testing of meteor sites?
Mouseflow does work with Meteor, though you might need to enable some extra features in the Mouseflow dashboard. The most notable would be the enhanced tracking mode, Session Support, which is necessary to track Meteor pages.
Additionally, it might be necessary to block some scripts from being loaded in playback, but that is something the Mouseflow crew can easily do from their end, if you contact them through the support links.
Disclaimer: I work for Mouseflow
After trying all the tools, I found inspectlet
http://www.inspectlet.com/
and had no problems integrating that with meteor. It's a new tool and seems to be designed from the start with Single Page apps in mind. Overall their tool is quite minimal but does the job really well and seems to work flawlessly with meteor. They're also a startup and were very responsive on other questions.
I created a small wrapper meteor package around Inspectlet and other a few other useful metrics toolkits, if anyone is interested I'll publish it to atmosphere (let me know here).
In my company we are now looking to start using an issue tracker. So far we've been using our task management system for issue tracking, and now we need something more advanced.
We found out that we have lots (1000s) of small issues that we can automatically generate, and we want to handle them based on a prioritized queue. Such small issues are usually content issues. Sometimes issues are outright errors that come up, and we want to prioritize these based on how critical the error is and how many users encountered it.
Another feature we are looking for is the ability to aggregate issues that are identical, based on some identification string we can generate. We would also like it to be possible to aggregate issues manually - i.e. mark two issues as duplicates in an easy way via the UI.
Finally, we are interested in the issue tracker to have a usable set of tools for managing issues manually - prioritizing, setting owners, generating reports, etc.
My question to you is: what issue tracker would you recommend we use?
If the question is still active, I am a developer # bontq.com. It is an issue tracking system with both web access and Win/Mac desktop apps, SVN, GIT integration, public API, prioritisation and a bunch of other useful features, which you have not mentioned in your question. You can create a free account there and try the system - maybe it is the one you are looking for.
If you will have any questions regarding the system (especially web interface and API) - you can ask me here. I will gladly help you.
PS: this response is not an advertisement - just trying to be helpful.
We're looking into implementing an issue tracker for our web agency. The problem is that most issue trackers seem to revolve around the assumption that an issue is a bug, whereas in a web agency environment, a lot of the issues (request, or whatever you want to call them) are about changes and additions to a current web site.
It also seems to me that a lot of issue trackers assume that you're working on one main software project, and uses that project as the focus of the tracker. A good issue tracker for a web agency would be one which puts each separate client and their issues at the heart of the system, making it easy for them to track and report issues.
Does anyone know of a good issue tracker for the web agency workflow? What are other people using?
In my experience, issue trackers are so closely coupled to the workflow of the organisation that what works in one place may be a complete misfit in another. That said, could basecamp work for you?
We are using Gemini very flexible with the ability to have workflow at the project level.
But where Gemini really helps us is the cross project views. You can view your work across all projects with really good fitering.
Have you had a look at fixx at all? Obviously, being the developer of fixx, I will want to plug it but I know from first-hand experience that a lot of our customers are web agencies who work in a service-oriented environment and need to track more than just "software development" projects.
With fixx, you can define custom issue types (for example "change request" or "Copy changes") and track work against that type.
Unfortunately, fixx still does suffer from the "project-centric" view but a lot of our customers work around this by defining a project per client/website. So, if you were doing web/maintenance on stackoverflow.com, you would have a project called "stackoverflow.com maintenance" and would assign all your users from that company to that specific project. From there, using notifications and filters, it would be very easy for clients to keep track of progress on their specific issues.
FogBugz – it's simple by default, but extensible; it's got an integrated wiki, charts, tags, and you can even tie it to your source-control system (and they also offer their own integrated source control system, Kiln, which is pretty amazing with FogBugz).
Are you using other applications to manage the rest of your business' operations?
I ask because WORKetc has great issue tracking software, and this software is combined with other aspects of business management which can simplify the management process. So not only could you manage all support inquiries and responses in one place, but also your projects, finances, and contacts. Most importantly, it would allow you to use one central contact base for your entire company, while allowing you to reference that contact information (as well as lead information) while working on support inquiries, projects, invoices, etc.
WORKetc's support system works around email integration and simple ticket system (as well as prioritizing) and directly integrates with projects, contacts, and other aspects of the system so that you can save time while responding and managing tickets.
I think especially for the use case of a web-agency, where it's not really about bugs, but mostly (visual) feedback and all of it happens on the web, a visual feedback tool might be the thing you're looking for. Most of these tools will create a screenshot of the webpage and include the given feedback on it.
Some of them also have some kind of dashboard where you can discuss further, or have integrations to other tools like Basecamp (and some them do both).
Here's an article from smashing magazine, which describes a lot of them, e.g.: TrackDuck, BugMuncher. Another great tool the article doesn't mention, maybe because the article is a bit dated, is Usersnap – this one even includes browser extensions.
Hi I am currently designing a website for a client - the site will be written in asp.net with a cms built in. My client has come back saying he wants to play mp4s on the site - plus being able to embed some other videos from youtube, vimeo etc.... in his blog - I have managed to convice my client that playing .flv would be better for obvious reasons (which he has agreed is OK). but when I went back to my coder, he said that because of the fact its a dynamic site that it will take 2 days to get this working (in terms of creating the mechanics to allow my client to up load his movies etc.....)
Is this correct - as my client is under the impression that it should be a simple thing to do - while my coder tells me that its not that simple.
I am in the middle of all of this - can you help please!!!!
At the end of the day only the coder you are using knows exactly how much effort is required here. You have to trust them. This almost certainly not trivial. Make sure you and the coder understand exactly what's being asked for here and that neither of you are assuming anything about how the client expects it to work.
Is your client a programmer? Non-programmers should never dictate how long a programming task should take.
If you're cowboy coding without testing "today" would probably suffice, but any sane and professional development shop would never let this happen.
Now let's clarify what your client really told you to do:
Your dev seems to be assuming that he has to support adding/uploading videos from your CMS.
If your dev is going to use a 3rd party API like YouTube, 2 sounds reasonable. If you're going to serve it on your own site, it'd take at least a week's worth of programming to make sure your site can take such a heavy load of streaming data -- it's stupid, not to mention highly irresponsible, to assume it could be worked out in a day.
Now, if you're client is only really talking about embedding videos in blog entries or articles, that's a very trivial task: YouTube, Vimeo and other video sharing sites already supply the HTML embed code that's needed to display a video on a page. In fact that's a zero effort task assuming that your blog entry editor properly parses the embed code, or has an Edit HTML feature.
So, which one is which?
This might be a good occasion to use the <video> tags. It might simplify things at the cost of only supporting users with recent browsers.
Two days is a quite optimistic estimate for all that you've mentioned. Maybe for embedding YouTube videos only, but for upload/storage/streaming of videos on the local server it's a different thing entirely.
But if you don't understand programming yourself, then you have to trust the expert that you've hired to do the job for you, and you have to tell the client that is how long it will take. The fact is that these things aren't trivial to write, there's the front end website management interface that needs creating, and the back end server software that manages what to do with the uploaded file. Never mind integration and making sure it's easy for the client to run a workflow of upload file, incorporate that video inside some content in the CMS, and so on.
I just recently did this, you need to get videoLan http://www.videolan.org/
This streams mostly anything, after you set up a streaming site it's easy!