New home for blog

I am now blogging over at richard.hulse.nz. See you there.

RNZ Browser and OS stats for Feb 2016

A few times a year I release browser and OS stats for www.radionz.co.nz and The Wireless.

In this February 2016 release we can see that the the Chrome browser is still increasing its market share, and the shift from desktop to mobile continues.

It is no longer good enough to provide a mobile compatible site, or even a mobile friendly one - we need to be making sites where the mobile experience is excellent.

Browsers

Browser	02/2016	07/2015	02/2015	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009
Chrome	39.2	37.63	33.6	30.8	25.23	23.7	14.6	13.8	8.75	4.2
Safari	26.7	20.14	18	18.8	18.94	17.52	17.3	5.6	13.1	10
IE	9.83	14.73	17.2	18.9	24.02	26.3	37.5	41.2	50.6	56
Firefox	9.03	11.26	12.3	14.5	14.81	16.6	19.8	23.2	25.52	27.5
Safari (in-app)	8.78	7.8
Android	3.3	5.3	8.3	9.0	11.71	11	7.5
Opera	0.3	.38	0.4	0.4	0.46		0.69	0.7	0.9	1.02

At The Wireless things are very different: Chrome 48%, Safari (in app) 19.58%, Safari 16.27%, Firefox 7.5%, IE 4.3%, Android 1.7%

Operating Systems

OS	02/2016	07/2015	02/2015	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009
Windows	36.2	42.67	44.8	48.9	52.9	58	67.3	72	81	84.8
iOS	31.3	23.37	21.42	18.4	16.6	14	7.88
Android	21.16	20.66	20.89	17	16.5	13.7	7.79	3.6	0.3	0.02
Mac	8.99	9.69	9.44	11.7	10.7	13.4	14.7	15.6	14.2	12.6
iPhone								2.5	1.4	0.56
iPad								2.4	0.63	0
Linux		1.04	1.38	1.6	1.9	1.8	1.27	1.53	1.4	1.45
Win Phone	0.7	0.82	0.63	0.57	0.44	0.39
iPod								0.5	0.35	0.22

And at The Wireless, iOS 31.4%, Windows 30.8%, Android 21.6%, Mac 13.6%, Linux .99%, Win Phone 0.55%

Mobile

In June 2012 mobile was 16% of our traffic. In November 2013 it was 29%. In March 2014 it was 23.4% mobile and 10.8% for tablet, making 34.2%. In September 2014 it was 61.8%, 26.3% mobile and 11.8% for tablet. Feb 2015 it was 55.5% desktop, 32.8% mobile and 11% for tablet.

At the end of July 2015 it is 53% desktop, 34% mobile, and 12.4% tablet.

This month desktop has declined once again, now down to 45.6%. Mobile has increased to 42.49% mobile, and tablet is down slightly to 11.84%.

At The Wireless it is 46.7% mobile, 45% desktop, and 7.7% tablet.

RNZ Browser & OS Stats for July 2015

This is the July 2015 release of browser and OS stats for www.radionz.co.nz and The Wireless.

The Chrome browser is still increasing its market share, and the shift from desktop to mobile continues.

Browsers

Browser	07/2015	02/2015	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009
Chrome	37.63	33.6	30.8	25.23	23.7	14.6	13.8	8.75	4.2
IE	14.73	17.2	18.9	24.02	26.3	37.5	41.2	50.6	56
Safari	20.14	18	18.8	18.94	17.52	17.3	5.6	13.1	10
Firefox	11.26	12.3	14.5	14.81	16.6	19.8	23.2	25.52	27.5
Safari (in-app)	7.8
Android	5.3	8.3	9.0	11.71	11	7.5
Opera	.38	0.4	0.4	0.46		0.69	0.7	0.9	1.02

At The Wireless things are very different: Chrome 45%, Safari (in app) 22%, Safari 13.8%, Firefox 8.1%, IE 7.8%, Android 3.3%

Operating System

OS	07/2015	02/2015	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009
Windows	42.67	44.8	48.9	52.9	58	67.3	72	81	84.8
iOS	23.37	21.42	18.4	16.6	14	7.88
Android	20.66	20.89	17	16.5	13.7	7.79	3.6	0.3	0.02
Mac	9.69	9.44	11.7	10.7	13.4	14.7	15.6	14.2	12.6
iPhone							2.5	1.4	0.56
iPad							2.4	0.63	0
Linux	1.04	1.38	1.6	1.9	1.8	1.27	1.53	1.4	1.45
Win Phone	0.82	0.63	0.57	0.44	0.39
iPod							0.5	0.35	0.22

And at The Wireless, iOS 31.6%, Windows 31%, Android 21.7%, Mac 13.5%, Linux .93%, Win Phone 0.6%

Mobile

In June 2012 mobile was 16% of our traffic. In November 2013 it was 29%. In March 2014 it was 23.4% mobile and 10.8% for tablet, making 34.2%. In September 2014 it was 61.8%, 26.3% mobile and 11.8% for tablet. Feb 2015 it was 55.5% desktop, 32.8% mobile and 11% for tablet.

As at the end of July 2015 it is 53% desktop, 34% mobile, and 12.4% tablet.

At The Wireless it is 47% mobile, 45% desktop, and 7.4% tablet.

I should note that the sudden skew to mobile at The Wireless is because several of their stories have done well internationally, and much of that traffic was mobile.

What CMS Should I Choose?

This post has moved to here.

Should we underline links on headlines?

This post has moved to here.

Stop Wasting My Time - Please Fix Your Podcast!

This post has moved to here.

Marking up durations for screen readers

This post has moved to here.

Who Is The Customer?

We've all seen websites that reflect the internal structure and politics of an organisation. It is a particularly common pattern among Government agencies. From their home pages you can see all the departments and what they do. The divisions with the most space on the home page can be assumed to be the ones with the most powerful and influential managers.

Is this the best way to build a website?

Generally speaking, sites that reflect organisational structure are not very effective because they don't have any particular customer in mind, or the wrong customer altogether.

The identification and understanding of your customer is the key to building, maintaining and growing a successful online product.

But how do we decide who your customer is?

Looking at the wider market, many successful internet businesses were started by people who built something they themselves needed.

TradeMe, according to folklore, was started after founder Sam Morgan had a frustrating experience buying a heater for his chilly flat.

Mark Zuckerberg explained the origins of Facebook at a Y Combinator event in 2012: "I started building Facebook because I wanted to use it in college…we weren’t looking to start a company."

Basecamp - a project management tool - was originally built by 37Signals to manage their own projects. In 2014 their strategy changed to focus entirely on building and supporting the product for external customers.

Others businesses were built after a market niche was identified. 

Xero, for example, was founded in 2006 by Rod Drury and Hamish Edwards after they identified a gap in the small business accounting market.

Twitter was also created to fill a gap in the market, rather than the needs of the founders.

In these examples it is clear what the product is and who it is intended for.

Who is the customer?

Products must be designed for a customer. That person will use the service and be the final arbiter of the success of the product.

But that customer is not 'us' or 'me'. You are your fellow employees have a unique perspective and thus are outliers. You know too much about the inner working of the company and perhaps not enough about the people you need to serve.

Our preferences and inclinations are based on experiences within the organisation we work for and our particular market. The average customer is not at all like any individual employee, groups of employees, or even (most likely) your friends. The customer's priorities are different to ours.

There will of course be some overlap between our customer's preferences and our own. But we must not be fooled by these similarities. Consider the possibility that people you've met and didn't like might be more representative of your customers!

We must not extrapolate our personal taste and shared experiences with colleagues and friends and assume they are indicative of the market at large or the market we want to address.

We must be objective in this task, yet there are few people who can mentally detach themselves sufficiently to cut through office politics and organisational dogma.

Finding You Customer

If you are an entrepreneur (or intrepreneur) the customer might be you. This is common where the founders or project team are a fair proxy for, or representative of, the customer. Where there is a significant amount of innovation the customer may not yet exist. What existing consumer can evaluate a product they don't know they want or need?

Mostly this will not be the case and you'll have to do some market research. There are dozens of ways to go about this, and the only thing I would suggest is to find an external company to work with who can challenge your assumptions.

A useful tool here is personas - written representations of customers - that can be used during the development of the site to help you stay focussed on the real market.

A question taste - but whose?

It is a generally a mistake to design products based on personal taste.

Your tastes are based on the past and stability.

In a declining market you can stick with what you and your customers are comfortable with (or what you believe they are comfortable with).

Being a taste-maker is very different to having personal taste.

Taste-makers are highly oriented towards the future and change.

An example of taste-making is the iPhone. No one wanted or asked for a touch screen phone. The first iPhone had many problems, yet it set the standard for a whole new type of product. Even more so, the iPad. Older examples are the fax and the photocopier. All created whole new markets.

Taste-making requires fresh knowledge, innovation and persistence.

Our role as taste-makers is to set aside our prejudices to create something that can engage someone who may not be at all like us. The customer of the future.

And just because you dislike something does not mean it is wrong for the customer.

What is 'value' to the customer?

A successful website will deliver value to the customer. What is valuable to you (e.g. an online org chart) might be of little value to your customers. To close, here are some measures of value:

• ‘Good’ content
• Is this about 'me' or my social group?
• Is it relevant?
• Does it make me think about other points of view?
• There seem to be guiding principles at work.
• Does it make sense?
• Is it entertaining?
• Does it move me to action?
• Can it be shared?
• Can I download it?
• Can I respond to it?
• Can I find more content like this?
• Can I find out more about this content (links, video, audio, text, images)
• Not wasting my time.
• Accurate
• Reliable
• More than I expected
• Trustworthy
• Easy to use
• A fast seamless experience – I know what to do next.
• The purpose is clear
• Perceived as good use of public money (government sites)

Radio NZ Browser and OS stats for February 2015

This is the February 2015 release of browser and OS stats for www.radionz.co.nz and The Wireless.

Overall, the Chrome browser is increasing its market share, and the shift from desktop to mobile continues. Windows has dropped to under 50%.

Browsers

Browser	02/2015	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Chrome	33.6	30.8	25.23	23.7	14.6	13.8	8.75	4.2	1.47
IE	17.2	18.9	24.02	26.3	37.5	41.2	50.6	56	63
Safari	18	18.8	18.94	17.52	17.3	5.6	13.1	10	5.66
Firefox	12.3	14.5	14.81	16.6	19.8	23.2	25.52	27.5	27.73
Android	8.3	9.0	11.71	11	7.5
Opera	0.4	0.4	0.46		0.69	0.7	0.9	1.02	1.08

IE is still in decline, and IE6 is 0.12%, IE7 1.2%, IE8 10%, IE9 16.2%, IE10 9.9%. IE11 is at 61%.

At The Wireless things are very different: Chrome 49%, Firefox 13.03%, Safari 13.8%, Safari (in app) 11.4%, IE 7.6%, Android 3.6%

Operating System

OS	02/2015	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Windows	44.8	48.9	52.9	58	67.3	72	81	84.8	89.3
iOS	21.42	18.4	16.6	14	7.88
Android	20.89	17	16.5	13.7	7.79	3.6	0.3	0.02	0
Mac	9.44	11.7	10.7	13.4	14.7	15.6	14.2	12.6	8.5
iPhone						2.5	1.4	0.56	0.19
iPad						2.4	0.63	0	0
Linux	1.38	1.6	1.9	1.8	1.27	1.53	1.4	1.45	1.72
Win Phone	0.63	0.57	0.44	0.39
iPod						0.5	0.35	0.22	0.08

And at The Wireless, Windows 44.7%, iOS 20.3%, Mac 17.7%, Android 14.35%, Linux 1.37%, Win Phone 0.47%

Mobile

In June 2012 mobile was 16% of our traffic. In November 2013 it was 29%. In March 2014 it was 23.4% mobile and 10.8% for tablet, making 34.2%. In September 2014 it was 61.8%, 26.3% mobile and 11.8% for tablet. Now it is 55.5% desktop, 32.8% mobile and 11.% for tablet.

The most popular devices are - iPhone (27.6%), iPad (20%), and Samsung GT-I9300 Galaxy S III (3.03%)

Over at The Wireless 28% of the traffic is mobile and 6.8% tablet, with popular devices being iPhone (40%), iPad (15.1%) Galaxy S IV (5%).

Why I'm Fixated with Page Load Times And You Should Be Too

I am fixated with page load times. Why?

There are three main reasons:

1. Mobile
2. User experience
3. SEO 

Mobile

Mobile is the fastest growing market segment for web traffic. Radio NZ has 40% of its traffic from non-desktop browsers.

Desktop is 60%, Mobile at 28% and Tablet at 11.8%.

In the case of devices used over a mobile network, the connection speed is going to be a lot slower than broadband. We also still have people on dial-up, and slow broadband (1-2 Mb/s or less).

These are what I call 'The Slow Networks'. I suspect that up 35-40% of visitors could be using a slow network. That is 40% of visitors who could have a bad experience if no thought was put into their experience of the site.

So, we optimise for page size, deliver speed and rendering time, and this underlies all my technical decision-making. (Edit: You'll probably find Radio NZ is one of the fastest news sites on mobile, and URLs all work between mobile and desktop for ease of sharing.)

User Experience

The psychology of website speed has been long understood. And lately, here, and here. Fast sites are perceived as more credible.

They are also easier to use - visitors can quickly see the page and decide what to do. Now obviously other factors come into play here. Every page needs to treated as page one in a journey - once the visitor has finished with the current page, what can/do they do next? That is a tough question for which there is not a single answer.

SEO

One factor in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is page load time. The faster your site is the more pages an indexing bot can crawl in a set time period. Google consider page load time so important they include them in Analytics, and it is believed this is used in calculating your page rank.

We actually use other methods to tell Google what the latest content is, so they can index that first, but this does not remove the need to optimise all pages.

Every few months, to keep on top of performance, I compare the performance of www.radionz.co.nz with other NZ media websites. I also benchmark the site against past performance, and follow a number of thought leaders in the performance area to keep up with the latest thinking and techniques.

This is no longer bleeding edge stuff for nerds to talk about over beer. It is mainstream and every site can benefit from improving page speed.

For some it is as simple as restructuring the order of elements in the head of a HTML page. For others, a few web server configuration options could help. Yet others may be almost beyond help with 10 megabyte pages, duplicate JS library code, unoptimised images, and bloated CSS.

And then there will be those that will not care. All the studies say you are leaving money on the table, but in the end that is your choice.

There are plenty of resources available for free. Just start with a Google search, and good luck!

I Found A Lump - Why All Men Should Learn TSE

Normally I write here only on tech issues.

Last year I found a lump and I thought I'd share my experience in the hope that it helps other men. The story does have a happy ending, and I have a challenge for you to complete.

Late last year I started feeling sore on the right side of the scrotum, and so I checked for lumps using a technique called Testicular Self Examination, or TSE. This is not something I have done often, usually only when reminded of it after hearing or reading something about it in the press.

I found several lumps, one about twice the size of a pea. I booked to see the doctor immediately.

The visit was fairly routine. He examined both testicles, carefully as I was in much pain. His initial diagnosis was an infection of the didymus. This is the small tube that transports sperm manufactured in the testicle to inside the body.

He prescribed some fairly strong antibiotics to settle things down, and said I should book for an ultrasound when I got back from holiday.

My main concern was the time-frame. The doctor assured my that if it was cancer - and he was fairly sure at this point that it was not - that a few weeks would not have a negative impact difference in on the outcome.

When I got back from leave I dutifully went and got the ultrasound. The technician told me quite quickly that she could find no lumps at all on either testicle, but did confirm very small remains from the infection.

The doctor called me to confirm the result that day, and said if I have further issues come right back.

What did I learn from this?

Firstly, don't panic. All lumps are not cancer. If they are, you have about a 98% chance of survival if they are caught early. They key word here is early.

You are you own first line of defence.

Secondly, get over any embarrassment.

You will do TSE in private - no one will know you do it unless you blog about it. I think we are past that sort of thing now, aren't we?

Doctors look at body parts all day. They know how to handle patients who may be stressed and/or embarrassed. Get over it.

A special note on having an ultrasound exam. The process was discreet and respectful. Each step was explained before it happened and only the area to be examined is visible. There is no physical contact between you and the technician and it does not hurt.

My challenge to you is this: start TSE today, and do it regularly.

It is vital that you learn what your testicles normally feel like. I'd suggest doing it once a week for a couple of months until you get used it. If I had been doing that already, I don't think this would have been as stressful.

When you find anything of concern get it checked by a doctor as soon as practicable.

If you do take this challenge up, please mention it on social media, link back here and challenge others to do the same.

Can partners help? Yes, you can. If you are woman, perhaps get your man to start when you have your next smear, or you can make breast self exams and TSE something you do together. Guy partners? You are not exempt!

Please, encourage your man to take the challenge today, and stick to it.

Resources

How to do testicular self examination.

And another with links to resources.

The NZ Testicular Cancer Website

How to monitor HTTP headers in near real-time

Unix has many tools that you can stitch together to do useful things.

For example, if you want to watch your site headers in near real-time you can use watch and curl.

You might want to do that if you need to build information headers (like X-Cache-Info) and you want to quickly try out different ideas.

In my case I use it during a patch window to monitor when our site's proxy server has changed so that the (now inactive) proxy can have updates applied.

The command that you run in a terminal is:

watch "curl -I -s www.example.com"

-I is headers only, while -s is silent. It'll print the headers every two seconds by default. If you want to update every second it is:

watch -n 1 "curl -I -s www.example.com"

How to ignore alihack requests using your nginx config

If you are getting the following error in your Rails app:

   unexpected token at 'alihack<%eval request("alihack.com")%>

...it can be blocked in your nginx config.

The following snippet can be placed inside the server block and returns a  '400 Bad Request' with a text message in the body.

A big assumption here is that your app is not using json - it blocks all JSON PUT requests. This could be refined to check for third header that your own app sets, if that is a problem.

You could change this to a redirect or a json response if you want (commented out below).

# ali.txt attempt on any URL
if ($content_type = "application/json") { 
  set $ali_txt JSON; 
} 
if ($request_method = PUT) {
  set $ali_txt "${ali_txt}_PUT"; 
} 
if ($ali_txt = JSON_PUT) {
 return 400 "Bad request - ignoring"; 
 # return 444;
 # return 301 http://www.example.com/some-page
}

This should not be placed inside a location block.

Radio NZ Browser and OS stats for September 2014

This is the September 2014 release of browser and OS stats for www.radionz.co.nz and The Wireless.

Overall, the Chrome browser is increasing its market share, and the shift from desktop to mobile continues. Windows has dropped to under 50%.

Browsers

Browser	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Chrome	30.8	25.23	23.7	14.6	13.8	8.75	4.2	1.47
IE	18.9	24.02	26.3	37.5	41.2	50.6	56	63
Safari	18.8	18.94	17.52	17.3	5.6	13.1	10	5.66
Firefox	14.5	14.81	16.6	19.8	23.2	25.52	27.5	27.73
Android	9.0	11.71	11	7.5
Opera	0.4	0.46		0.69	0.7	0.9	1.02	1.08

IE is still in decline, and IE6 is 0.22%, IE7 1.2%, IE8 14%, IE9 19.2%, IE10 12.9%. IE11 is at 51%.

At The Wireless things are very different: Chrome 45%, Safari (in app) 15%, Firefox 13%, Safari 12.6%, IE 7.4%, Android 4.7%

Operating System

OS	09/2014	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Windows	48.9	52.9	58	67.3	72	81	84.8	89.3
iOS	18.4	16.6	14	7.88
Android	17	16.5	13.7	7.79	3.6	0.3	0.02	0
Mac	11.7	10.7	13.4	14.7	15.6	14.2	12.6	8.5
iPhone					2.5	1.4	0.56	0.19
iPad					2.4	0.63	0	0
Linux	1.6	1.9	1.8	1.27	1.53	1.4	1.45	1.72
Win Phone	0.57	0.44	0.39
iPod					0.5	0.35	0.22	0.08

And at The Wireless, Windows 40.9%, iOS 22.8%, Mac 18.7%, Android 15%, Linux 1.4%, Win Phone 0.6%

Mobile

In June 2012 mobile was 16% of our traffic. In November 2013 it was 29%. In March 2014 it was 23.4% mobile and 10.8% for tablet, making 34.2%. Now it is 61.8%, 26.3% mobile and 11.8% for tablet.

The most popular devices are still the same as last time - iPad (24.8%), iPhone (22.7%), and Samsung GT-I9300 Galaxy S III (3.9%)

Over at The Wireless 39% of the traffic is mobile, with popular devices being iPhone (41%), iPad (16.9%) Galaxy S III (4.3%).

How news events impact web traffic

This short post shows how news events impact website traffic on radionz.co.nz, and how we handle it technically.

On 18 August Guyon Espiner interviewed the Prime Minister about the claims in the book Dirty Politics. Within 10 minutes of the interview airing and being posted on the site traffic jumped to nearly twice normal levels, and stayed up for 12 hours. The interview was the most listened to audio on our site with around 18,000 listens.

On 26 August we saw a huge peak as our story about Manchester United signing Di Maria was linked from a UK news aggregator. This sometimes happens with our international coverage because our news cycle is 12 hours different from the UK.

Judith Collins resigned on 30 August and while there was a slight increase in traffic on the day, the interviews the following week were a big driver of visits.

On 15 September Morning Report interview the PM about the GCSB, which was followed by Glen Greenwald. He was interviewed again by Kathryn Ryan. These three interviews were the most listened to that day, and the next.

Against these peak events we've seen an overall increase in baseline visits to the site. This is partly to our excellent election section where the news team has put a lot of work into the coverage, and also to our election interview collection. The biggest stories have been our running Fact Or Fiction feature and the Poll of Polls where Colin James analyses the most recent Polls. The leader video profiles have also been popular.

There was a big peak on Tuesday 16 September as people came to view the live stream of examination of the Colossal Squid at Te Papa.

And then there are the regular visits to audio and other news coverage right across the whole site.

The Technical Side

Some of these fast-moving events can cause sudden and large increases in traffic, and that presents some technical challenges.

Firstly, the news team have to be able to update the story quickly and often while the site is under high load. We have a publishing system that allows our newsroom editing system to update our CMS directly with the press of one key. No messing about with HTML and image placement and a single story can be updated in under 5 seconds. The news subs can also update up to 100 stories (if they needed to) in under 30 seconds.

As an aside, we can typically publish audio interviews within 5 minutes of broadcast.

The traffic peaks are handled using a front-end cache, although this is setup to still allow frequent updates. We use Varnish which is reputed to be able to easily handle 10,000 requests a second, although we've never gotten to that number.

The content management system - our own bespoke design, built with the Ruby on Rails framework - has been optimised to have quick page load times, even over dial up and slow mobile connections.

All of these makes it a breeze (IMHO) to deliver news and audio content quickly to an increasingly demanding audience.

Do you have the right CMS?

I have evaluated dozens of content management systems over the last 20 years, as well have having built several myself. The answer to the question, do we have the right CMS, is almost always going to be no.

It is no because your business will always be changing, and there will be a gap between what you want to do, and what your CMS will let you do.

Given this gap, the question that inevitably follows is, would be better off with something else. That depends on how big the gap is, and whether it can be closed (and the cost).

There are four things a CMS needs to do.

1. Product Delivery

The most obvious is that it must allow you to deliver your product. This might be a blog (writing), or selling things (commerce), or a large media site like the one I manage (news, features and audio story telling).

2. Business Processes Support

The second is that it must support a streamlined business process. Note that I am not saying it should support your current business process. It might already do that, and that might be a problem - it might be limiting your ability to improve and streamline the way you do business. 

It might even be, and I have seen this many times, that the functionality of the CMS forces you to work in a way that is inefficient or convoluted. Technology should not dictate to you how to run your business.

3. Systems Integration

It must also integrate with any of your existing business systems - and these are probably systems that you cannot easily replace. An example from my own company is how we've integrated our newsroom system - used by over 100 people daily - with the CMS.

4. Innovation

The last, and probably the most important is, does it allow you to continually innovate in the first three areas. Can you launch new products? Can you improve your business processes? Can you improve the way existing systems interact with the CMS?

If your CMS allows you to do these things, then you are probably in good shape but for one exception: cost. What is the cost of being able to achieve the above four points?

There are three broad classes of CMS, and each has it own cost structure.

1. Proprietary

The CMS is a 'black box'. You use it, but you cannot see or modify the source code. Any changes have to be done by you the vendor who 'owns' the code, at a cost and timeframe they determine, hopefully in consultation with your. The term 'charge like a wounded bull' comes to mind.

2. Supported Open Source

In this case you can view the code, but you must still use your contracted vendor to make changes and add new features. Some prefer this model because they have the best of both worlds - access to the code, and some performance guarantees (based on losing the ability to change the code themselves).

3. Fully Open Source

A fully open system means you, or anyone you choose, can modify your CMS code, although this can be at the expense of reliability and performance if the change processes are not carefully managed. You may choose to work with one vendor.

The first two models can be problematic because the vendor's system will evolve based on their customers' needs, and this may not line up with your own individual needs. In RNZ's case we changed from a supported open source solution that we'd used successfully for 5 years because the system's performance and content management focus was moving away from media organisations.

We now follow the third model for the CMS that drives www.radionz.co.nz. In the last 30 days we have made over 100 changes to the CMS - some visible to the public, most to improve the administration section our staff use. We have also reduced the application's response time by 30% and a our page speed (according to Google) by 25% (see dip in the graph below).

In my experience that pace of change is next to impossible (at any reasonable cost) with the other two models. (We also have periods of little change, consolidation and reflection.)

Should you change your CMS?

You'll need to find out how much will it cost you to migrate to the new system, and determine if this will be paid back to you by the improvements you'll get from the change. Those improvements should include the four factors I outlined above.

In making a decision it can be useful to look at what your competitors are doing. In my field - media - the companies that are disrupting and innovating in this space all use custom CMSs built with open source software. They control the platform and in many cases the infrastructure too. I think that says a lot.

Which ever model you choose, you need to balance risk, innovation, internal capabilities (e.g. programming and infrastructure skills) and cost. I am happy to answer questions in the comments.

8 years of data

I have just published a Google doc of eight years of Operating System, Browser and Mobile data for www.radionz.co.nz.

I have also included a couple of graphs such as this one showing the decline of desktop use (click to see a larger version).

There are other interesting trends - the decline of IE, the decline of the Windows desktop OS, and the rise of Chrome (all as a percentage of the market) are also evident in the data.

I have released this data under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so please share links to anything you do with it in the comments below.

A visual aid to show you which media query is active

I've found it handy during the development of responsive CSS to know what stylesheet or media query is active.

The following is an example of how to dynamically add labels to a page.

@media screen and (max-width:600px) {
  .site-time p::after { 
    content:" (0-600px)";
  }
}

@media (min-width: 601px) and (max-width: 800px) {
  .site-time p::after { 
    content:" (601-800px)";
  }
}

I've picked an element that was in every variant of the site layout, and appended some text indicating the active sheet.

Radio NZ Browser Stats - March 2014

Here is another lot of browser and OS stats for www.radionz.co.nz and The Wireless.

Size of Content Library

The audio library now contains 27,000 hours of material, all of it searchable from www.radionz.co.nz/audio. That is 179,000 items, most of which are downloadable and embeddable.

We also just partnered with DigitalNZ who now have a copy of most of our audio metadata, and update it each night with new content.

Browsers

Browser	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Chrome	25.23	23.7	14.6	13.8	8.75	4.2	1.47
IE	24.02	26.3	37.5	41.2	50.6	56	63
Safari	18.94	17.52	17.3	5.6	13.1	10	5.66
Firefox	14.81	16.6	19.8	23.2	25.52	27.5	27.73
Android	11.71	11	7.5
Opera	0.46		0.69	0.7	0.9	1.02	1.08

IE is still in decline, and IE6 is 0.32%, IE7 1.86%, IE8 25%, IE9 20.7%, IE10 13%. IE11 is new at 37%.

At The Wireless things are very different: Chrome 37%, Safari (in app) 20%, Firefox 13%, Safari 12.5%, IE 11.3%, Android 5.0%

Operating System

OS	03/2014	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Windows	52.9	58	67.3	72	81	84.8	89.3
iOS	16.6	14	7.88
Android	16.5	13.7	7.79	3.6	0.3	0.02	0
Mac	10.7	13.4	14.7	15.6	14.2	12.6	8.5
iPhone				2.5	1.4	0.56	0.19
iPad				2.4	0.63	0	0
Linux	1.9	1.8	1.27	1.53	1.4	1.45	1.72
Win Phone	0.44	0.39
iPod				0.5	0.35	0.22	0.08

And at The Wireless, Windows 42%, iOS 26.5%, Mac 18.3%, Android 11%, Linux .78%, Win Phone 0.48%

Mobile

In June 2012 mobile was 16% of our traffic. In November 2013 it was 29%. It is now 23.4% mobile and 10.8% for tablet, making 34.2%.

The most popular devices are the same as last time - iPad (25%), iPhone (22%), and Samsung GT-I9300 Galaxy S III (5%)

Over at The Wireless 38.3% of the traffic is mobile, with popular devices being iPhone (51%), iPad (17%) Galaxy S III (5%).

November 2013 Browser Stats for Radio NZ

Here it is once again - my roundup of browser and OS stats for www.radionz.co.nz. This time I'm including stats from The Wireless.

Size of Content Library

The audio library now contains 25,000 hours of material, all of it searchable from www.radionz.co.nz/audio. That is 167,000 items, most of which are downloadable and embeddable.

Browsers

Browser	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
IE	26.3	37.5	41.2	50.6	56	63
Chrome	23.7	14.6	13.8	8.75	4.2	1.47
Safari	17.52	17.3	5.6	13.1	10	5.66
Firefox	16.6	19.8	23.2	25.52	27.5	27.73
Android	11	7.5
Opera		0.69	0.7	0.9	1.02	1.08

IE is in decline, and IE6 is 0.6%, IE7 3%, IE8 31%, IE9 22.6%, IE10 42%.

At The Wireless things are very different: Chrome 35%, Safari 16%, Safari (in app) 16%, Firefox 15%, IE 9.4%, Android 5.5%

Operating System

OS	11/2013	06/2012	11/2011	11/2010	11/2009	11/2008
Windows	58	67.3	72	81	84.8	89.3
iOS	14	7.88
Android	13.7	7.79	3.6	0.3	0.02	0
Mac	13.4	14.7	15.6	14.2	12.6	8.5
iPhone			2.5	1.4	0.56	0.19
iPad			2.4	0.63	0	0
Linux	1.8	1.27	1.53	1.4	1.45	1.72
Win Phone	0.39
iPod			0.5	0.35	0.22	0.08

And at The Wireless, Windows 40%, iOS 26%, Mac 20%, Android 10%, Linux 1.9%, Win Phone 0.55%

Mobile

When I last published stats in June 2012 mobile was 16% of our traffic. It is now 29%.

The most popular devices are iPad (27%), iPhone (21%), and Samsung GT-I9300 Galaxy S III (6%)

Over at The Wireless 36% of the traffic is mobile, with popular devices being iPhone (47%), iPad (21%) Galaxy S III (4%).

Social

20% of referrals to radionz.co.nz come from social sites (and 35% from Google news).

73% of referrals to thewireless.co.nz come from social sites.