[MT-users] greatest hits

[Paul Makepeace]

Je 2004-06-07 19:24:43 +0100, Jem Finer skribis:
> does anyone know if there is a way to get MT to create links to the 
> most popular bits of a blog ? I'm sure this is a tall order seeing as 
> how mostly you get a month worth at a time ?

I've wondered about this as well.

Part of the problem is that most people who follow a blog hit the thing
regularly looking at the home page. So the webserver sees a request for
"home page" and dutifully serves it up (or if not, I get some pain :-)

There isn't thus a log of what people are looking at specifically,
whether they're a Cosmolog junkie hitting refresh all day or someone who
drops back every now & then and reads all the entries on the page.

As you say, there are monthly archives which people could request. But
then your audience is people who would actually look at that which is
probably not a sample of what's being read. And you've got to factor in
search engines anyway.

Here's one idea. MT has this idea of "Entry Body", "Extended Body", and
"Excerpt". If you put text in the Extended Body you'll have a link
"Continue reading [blog title]". (See June 06 entry in
http://paulm.com/inchoate/ ) (You can use the Excerpt rather than
relying on MT taking the first 40 or so words from the Entry Body. A
teaser, in essence.)

So by using the Extended Body you're in effect forcing the reader to
perform a click, and thus a request, and thus a log, and thus a
trackable behaviour.

All sites have a /stats/ directory, btw, in case you didn't know. The
most popular requests are the final report on that page.

HTH,
Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace .............................. http://paulm.com/inchoate/

"What is green? Because the chinese menu always catches on fire."
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/