Cyberland

If you tried to sign in just now using the old web address, you may have noticed that you were redirected to www.hankhenley.com, our new freehold here in Cyberland.

Sorry about any confusion that may have caused, but you've landed safely here now. Thanks for stopping by.

I learned a lot about the web yesterday and nothing about anything else, so be forewarned that this isn't going to be my finest hour as a blog author. If you're new to this forum, it won't be typical of the other stuff you'll find here.

For instance yesterday I learned it is incredibly cheap and easy to buy your name as a web address. Anyone with 15 minutes and 20 dollars can rent any available URL for two years. Since I had the requisite time and money and www.hankhenley.com was available, I bought myself yesterday. How cool is that? I love technology!

Then I learned that it is incredibly difficult to set things up so that your blog directs would-be readers to your new address. It can be done and the proof is that you're here now, but it's not possible without reading a bunch of articles, making a bunch of false starts and engaging in some low level computer programming that eats up hours of your somewhat valuable time. I hate technology!

I also tweaked the blog a bit, and in the process screwed up and eliminated the "followers" list. I feel terrible about that guys--it made me feel good knowing all eight of you were out there supporting me. I'll put the followers gadget back up, but I'm sure you'll have to sign up again. Please do. I love seeing all your faces smiling back at me.

Among the other goodies I added yesterday is a subscription feature that allows you access to new posts or comments without going to the blog itself. A couple of you have requested this. You can do this now if you have a Google or Yahoo home page or use Google Reader or any number of other technologies I don't understand. It takes a little ego on my part to do add this feature since I don't currently subscribe to any blogs this way and I'm not sure why anyone would want to do this with mine. I did use this new feature to add your comments to my own Google home page so that I'll know right away when you're speaking back to me.

I'm starting a list of carefully selected links. The first one is to my sister Carol's blog. Carol and her husband Lee are family farmers in Wisconsin. Given that there aren't that many of their kind left, her window into their daily lives is really interesting. Carol is also a talented writer and one insightful lady. If you know of a very cool and/or interesting website you think I might like to add, let me know.

Check out the fish gadget, which I'll keep up for a little while. Move your pointer around their aquarium and watch the fish follow it. Click around inside the aquarium and see what happens. That should keep you entertained for, oh, 20 seconds or so. Isn't the internet a treasure trove of mindless, time killing fun?

But the grooviest feature I added yesterday is one you guys don't get to see. I added a bit of code to the blog that allows me to track the interaction on it. It's free for the basic setup and the level of detail provided is pretty amazing. For instance, I see how many of you are out there, where you come from (shout out to Orlando, whoever you are), what time you click in, how many pages you look at, how long you stay and all kinds of other cool stuff like that.

Here's what I learned about this blog's readers based on my first day of data:

1. My biggest fan is--well--me. I represented more than half of the visits to the site yesterday, mostly because I kept going to the site as I tried to get the new address to work properly.

2. My second biggest fan base is at the University of Alabama. Thanks to all three of you and Roll Tide! Now get back to work and go back to your studies.

It will be interesting watching the traffic patterns on this blog over the next year. It could be gratifying or depressing, so tell your friends and neighbors I'm out here and longing for their attention. But, either way, I'll keep doing this.

And I'll be looking for you.