Tools Used to Create Our Website

Our CHA-Notes website was created by using the following tools. These are all currently free tools that can be used by creating an account, in our case generally the cambridgehistoricalassociation account.

• Blogger is the service used to create the blog. For this a Google Account which includes Gmail is needed.
• Google Analytics is used to track usage of our website.
• PBwiki is a wiki service where I've created the Cambridge Historical Association Wiki as a wiki that only we can edit and everyone can see. This is where the expanded table of contents are created and stored.
• Scribd is a separate service where documents can be stored. This is where PDFs of the newsletter are stored.
• Picasa is a photo-storage service from Google. Pictures for the blog are automatically stored there in an album associated with the blog.
• Google Alerts is a service that provides regular updates on search topics. It emails new results from searches of blogs, news, or the web to you either once a day, once a week, or as it happens. I have searches for Cambridge Iowa and for historical societies or associations that sometimes have items useful for the web site or as examples.

Expanded Table of Contents for Second Book Underway

The expanded table of contents for our second book, Cambridge, Iowa 150 Years of Education in Cambridge and Union Township, Story County, Iowa has been started. You can follow its growth on our wiki. There will be a link to it on our regular website when it is further along.

This is similar to the one we created for our first book.

[Update July 26: The expanded TOC is completed and a link will be on our regular website shortly.]

Website Statistics

It finally dawned on me that this would be a good place to keep the statistics on the visitors to our website. This way they can be available to the group without needing to look back at the monthly meeting minutes. Recent usage of CHA Notes has been:

September 19 - October 19 2008 19 Visits 16 Absolute Unique Visitors 29 Pageviews

August 16 - September 15 2008 18 Visits 14 Absolute Unique Visitors 30 Pageviews

July 19 - August 18 2008 23 Visits 19 Absolute Unique Visitors 37 Pageviews

June 14 - July 14 2008 20 Visits 16 Absolute Unique Visitors 50 Pageviews

May 16 - June 15 2008 27 Visits 22 Absolute Unique Visitors 59 Pageviews

April 17 - May 17 2008 25 Visits 20 Absolute Unique Visitors 45 Pageviews

April 7 - May 7 2008 21 Visits 14 Absolute Unique Visitors 43 Pageviews

Notes: Google Analytics provide a running 30-day summary of usage showing visits, unique visitors, and pageviews. Statistics beyond 30 days ago are not available unless previously downloaded. It also shows how visitors reached the site (directly, by referral (following a link) or by searching) and where the link originated (the Cambridge, Iowa website has been our main source). Google had some system difficulties from April 30 to May 5 that meant data for that time was lost.

For comparison, CHA Project Notes had:

August 16 - September 15 2008 3 Visits 3 Absolute Unique Visitors 4 Pageviews

July 18 - August 17 2008 5 Visits 3 Absolute Unique Visitors 9 Pageviews

June 14 - July 14 2008 8 Visits 7 Absolute Unique Visitors 8 Pageviews

Solving the Dash Problem

One difficulty with our regular website address cha-notes.blogspot.com is that it contains a dash. This has created difficulties when it appears in print near the end of a line. If the line break appears at the dash, it can be confusing whether a dash should be included in looking for the site.

To address this, I've put a website at chanotes.blogspot.com (no dash in this!) which points people to our regular address. Let me know what you think.