A Look At 2007

KompoZer had a good year in 2007 and seems to be poised for another in 2008. KompoZer release 0.7.10 solved problems and added functionality to the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) editor. Over 400,000 copies of the free WYSIWYG web authoring package have been downloaded.

This blog is not affiliated with KompoZer but had a good year as well. By good year I mean we helped visitors with encouragement, advice and links to other sites. The challenge now is to determine what we can do to help novice web authors use KompoZer to achieve their goals.

Worldwide Indeed

Last year I made a comment about the World Wide Web: “An interesting thing about the Web is you are simultaneously talking to no one and everyone." The point is that authors need to define their audience to make sure the content of their site meets the visitor's needs.

A related post pointed you to a free counter that enables you to keep track of who is visiting your site and why. I continue to be impressed by the information StatCounter provides and what the information means.

The information collected for this blog says we have an international audience that is indeed worldwide. Less than half of the visitors come from the U.S.

The Top 8 countries account for about 80% of our visitors but the other 20% come from nearly everywhere.

Platforms and Browsers

KompoZer is a cross-platform, WYSIWYG web authoring application. KompoZer is a continuation of work started in Nvu, which was cross-platform, but sponsored for Linux machines.

Windows XP is the operating system used by 73% of our visitors while Vista is 9%. Firefox edges MSIE 7 for the number 1 browser slot but slips to second if MSIE 6 and 7 are combined.

Knowing who you are talking to and what they are using to view your site gives you important data points for site design. When I use KompoZer to develop a website I always test it in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Why They Come

Knowing why people come to your website is also important. More than 38% of the folks coming to this blog come while searching for “KompoZer tutorials.” I haven’t published a tutorial yet but I did provide links on where to find some. Visitors find the blog dealing with tutorials and my comments on how to begin.
That statistic tells me something about what needs to be done.

A reader sent me an email the other day saying, “I downloaded KompoZer and got it installed. Where do I begin?” I suggested the User Guide but remember my first, clueless encounter with Nvu and KompoZer. Reading the User Guide didn’t penetrate my thick head.

What’s to Come

I did a simple piece once upon a time on how to begin a web site and I guess it is time to polish that one off. The next thing would be a tutorial on how to use KompoZer.

Of course there is the argument that “so and so” has already done an excellent tutorial. That one has discouraged others from generating a potentially great tutorial. To me that argument is like saying we have nice books in the library so there is no need to write more. A tutorial is a personal thing. One may work for me but not you. A tutorial that hopes to answer a simple question should provide a simple, direct answer. If the reader wants the full story he can do further research.

Some of this is already started at the Wysi Wiki. The idea is to record my research and reasons reasons to do things in the "Tips and Links" section. Part of reason for the Wiki is to help me remember things I have already learned. You may find the Wiki information helpful.

That may mean some long nights but I’m used to that. Cheers.

Wysi

;.