It’s easy to do — just fill in the website address and your email, then click the Generate Report button. There’s also an option to enter the website address for competitor sites, so you can compare your results with theirs. I picked a couple of other Excel sites, so I could see where Contextures stood in comparison.

A couple of minutes later, the results were shown, and Contextures scored 96.8 — pretty good, with room for improvement.

Website Content

Website Grader was impressed that I had a blog, and posted there recently. It told me how many Google index pages are on my site (156), and said, "Generally, the more pages your site has within the Google cache, the better." So, I’d better add a few more!

The readability score surprised me — College Undergraduate. I try to avoid five-dollar words, and describe things as simply as possible, but if you read my website, you’re obviously pretty smart.

There’s a link to a Blog Grader too, if you want to try that.

Website Optimization

The report warned me that my Page Title was too long — by 1 character, so I’ve fixed that. It also recommended that I get the font tags out of the page. I’m starting an online CSS course next week, so I’ll improve things after that.

Website Promotion

The report even gives you a Twitter Grade, if there’s an account tied to the website. I was surprised to get 91.36, since I only have a few followers, and don’t tweet very often.

Monthly Reports

I signed up for the free monthly report, so I’ll see if the minor changes that I made had any effect. They’re also promoting a paid service, but it starts at $250/month, so I’ll pass on that.

What’s Your Grade?

Have you graded your website? Did you agree with the outcome? Please share your results in the comments.

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There’s a header picture option with the Twenty Ten theme, so this blog has a bit of colour now. Exciting, I know!

I’ve added a Recent Comments list in the right sidebar, and a list of categories, to make it easier to find things.

If you’re reading this in your RSS feed, you can wander over to the blog, and see what you think.

I like the clean look of the theme, and nice big font, and it’s easy to change the column settings and layout.

So far, so good.

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For example, WordPress 3.0 was released today, so I decided to test it on this blog first.

Backup First

Before installing the upgrade, I did an export of the blog’s data, from the WordPress dashboard. It would be smart to do a full database backup too, but I felt like living on the edge.

Find the Upgrade Button

For previous upgrades, I’ve seen a notice near the top of the dashboard, advising me that a new version of WordPress is available. There wasn’t anything visible when I logged in to WordPress, and I found the Upgrade option under the Tools menu in the dashboard’s sidebar.

Automatic Upgrade

You can download all the files and manually install the upgrade, but I opted to click the Upgrade Automatically button.

Everything went smoothly, and only took a few seconds.

New Features in WordPress 3.0

You can read about the new WordPress 3.0 features on the WordPress site.

The new feature that I noticed immediately is the Updates option under the Dashboard menu in the sidebar.

It was highlighted with a 1 symbol, and showed that my Theme had an update available. It’s handy to have everything in one screen, instead of individual lists.

So, I updated the theme, and even remembered to re-install the Google Analytics tracking code in the footer!

Will You Upgrade?

I’ll wait a day or two before installing WordPress 3.0 on any other blog, just to be sure everything REALLY went smoothly.

How about you? Will you upgrade to WordPress 3.0, or stick with your current version for a while?

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The map never changes, so I usually glance at it and move on. Today though, I clicked on Canada and it showed a dot for each city with readers. Hello, Yellowknife! And apparently they don’t have the Internet anywhere Sault Ste. Marie and Winnipeg, or maybe they have the Internet, but no Excel users.

Coincidentally, the second city in from the right is Sydney, Nova Scotia, and the second city from the left is Sidney, British Columbia.

The line of dots along the border reminded me of a comment that David Letterman made last week, after the Olympics. He said the USA wouldn’t have to invade Canada to overtake it, they could just move the border 1° north.

If you zoom out from the map, you get a regional analysis of the visitors. No surprises there, with most readers from the Americas.

And finally, I checked a larger version of the dashboard map, that gives better detail on the world countries. The only surprise here is that no one from Greenland has visited the Contextures Blog in the past month. I’ll have to get the marketing team to look into that.

So, are there any surprises in your Google Analytics maps?

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So, I decided to test my website and blogs, to see how they’d be assessed. Here’s the description of how the analyzer works:

It uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on 11000 blogs written by men and women.

I figured that the Excel sites would lean to the male side, because of the technical material. Probably more men than women are blogging about computer stuff.

And I was right – here are the scores:

1. We think http://blog.contextures.com is written by a man (82%).
2. We think http://www.contextures.com is written by a man (84%).
3. We think http://www.pivot-table.com is written by a man (84%).

It’s interesting that my Contextures website is slightly more manly than my Contextures blog.

This blog though, is gender neutral, despite having a female name.

• We guess http://debradalgleish.com/blog/ is written by a man (55%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

So – how does your blog/website rate?

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Some of those Excel help requests come with a file attachment, but most files are fairly small – in the 50-200 Kb size. I’ll admit to opening some of them, if the help request is interesting, and the problem is well described.

Today I got an email with a 2 Mb Excel attachment, from someone I’d never heard of, let alone had any prior interaction with. He was offering me an “interactive workbook” that I could put on my Sample Excel Files page.

Through careful research, he learned that my name is “Hi”, so that impressed me. (Many people believe that my name is “Sir”, so “Hi” is an improvement.)

I deleted the email immediately, so I can’t quote it exactly, but it had only a short paragraph with a vague description of the attachment. There were no details about sender or the file that made me want to take a look.

Sharing Your File

There are some files on my Sample Excel Files page that other people have created. You can learn amazing things by taking a look at someone else’s work.

Both Ron Coderre and Roger Govier have generously provided so many sample files that I created separate pages for them. Dave Peterson has contributed several files too, like his popular Navigation toolbar. But even they wouldn’t send a random 2 Mb file without asking if I’m interested.

If you have an Excel workbook that you’d like to share on my website, please let me know. Maybe it would be perfect for my website visitors.

If we haven’t met, or emailed, before, tell me a little about yourself, and the kind of file that you’ve created. I try to keep the sample files pretty small, so they’re quick and easy for people to download, so I probably won’t be able to use your file if it’s too big. 

Does This Happen to You?

Do you ever get giant Excel files that you didn’t ask for, and weren’t expecting? How do you handle that?

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It’s not too surprising, but today’s hot topic is the iPad, in a variety of spellings.

You can also see the hot searches, which are usually quite different than the hot topics. Today is the 24th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, so it makes sense that people are searching for information on that topic. But amaryllis flowers?

Website Trends

At the bottom of the Google Trends page, there’s a link to Trends for Websites. That takes you to a page that shows trends for Wikipedia.org. You can put your website in the search box, to see the overall trends, or focus on a specific page on your site.

You’ll see information similar to the data in Google Analytics, such as unique visitors and visitor regions. Here’s the visitor trend for the first part of last year on the Contextures site.

Check Similar Sites

When you view your site trends, you’ll see a list of other sites that people visited. You can put one of those sites in the search box, and see how it compares to your site.

For example, I took a look at Chip Pearson’s Excel site. Most of his visitors came from USA, India, UK, and Canada, and they also searched for Excel formulas.

Dick’s Daily Dose of Excel visitors are mainly from the USA, with a few from the UK, and they don’t search for anything else.

My visitors at Contextures.com are from the same regions as Chip’s and have very diverse interests. I have no explanation for their search topics!

Take a Look

Check your site, and a few of the similar sites. Do you find anything that surprises you?

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Today I found Google Browser Size, which shows the percentage of people who can see a specific area of the window, without scrolling.

According to Google:

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

I typed in the URL for my main website, www.contextures.com and you can see the results on the widescreen monitor above.

According to Google Browser Size, 90% of the visitors would see most of the What’s New section. Only 40% would see the first project heading, for Microsoft Access Database Design.

I’m not sure if this includes people who are using an iPhone or Blackberry. They probably don’t seem much at all!

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Most of the flagged comments are obvious spam, with long lists of links to dubious sites, or completely off topic remarks with links, or comments in Russian with links. If I can’t understand it, I’m sure not going to approve it! Delete.

A few comments try vague flattery to get their link-bearing comments posted. “This is the best post I’ve ever read on this topic. Keep up the good work!” Delete.

Others try confrontation or controversy. “Your article had great content until the last paragraph. Then you went completely off target.” Delete.

There are a few gems buried in the rubble though. I saw a comment in the Akismet list this week that made me laugh. “I found your blog while searching for first aid for heart attacks.” Really? You took the time to bookmark my site, then came back to make a comment? I hope your dying friend or co-worker wasn’t inconvenienced! Nice try though. Delete.

Have you found any treasures in your pile of spam comments?

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I’ve been making Excel tutorial videos for a while, and posting them on my Contextures site and YouTube. The most popular video, Drop Down List in Excel, was created in June 2008, and I probably used the $10 microphone that came with the computer.

The sound quality isn’t too good, and I’ve tried other microphones since then, with varying results. So, to improve the videos, I decided to splurge on a better microphone.

After hours of Googling, and reading reviews, I chose the Rode Podcaster USB microphone. I ordered it from Vistek, a Canadian chain that specializes in cameras and video equipment.

The microphone, at $349 CDN, wasn’t cheap, and I hoped it would prove to be a good investment. I unpacked the microphone and plugged it in, and after a bit of fiddling with the audio settings, it worked well.

However, the microphone is quite heavy – the specifications say 21.5 ounces, which is about 1.5 pounds. If you’re trying to record your voice and use the keyboard at the same time, it’s a bit of a challenge.

The microphone came with a “Microphone Stand Mount” but I discovered that’s something you attach to a microphone stand. And, of course, I didn’t have one of those lying around the office. (To the people at Rode and Vistek: It would help if you mentioned what accessories are required.)

So, it was back to Vistek to order a microphone stand. After waiting, and waiting, I learned that the new guy who took the order hadn’t processed it. He just took the money and put the order in a drawer somewhere, or forgot to push the right button.

The stand finally arrived, and I tried to figure out how to attach the stand mount and microphone to the stand. There were no instructions with the stand, and no pictures anywhere on the web, that I could find. All the pictures show the microphone separately. What help is that?

Finally, I found instructions that said to attach the microphone through the loop in the stand, using the locking collar at the bottom of the microphone. That was helpful, except that my microphone didn’t come with one of those.

Another phone call to Vistek, and they found another Rode Podcaster in stock. So, they took the locking collar from that one, and gave it to me. Here’s the Rode Podcaster Microphone attached to its microphone stand mount with the locking collar.

And a side view.

Now, after only five trips to the store, I have a new, fully functioning, microphone and stand.

But I’m too tired to use it!

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