Friday Archive Dive: Tracking Downloads with Google Analytics

Today's Archive Dive comes from Feb. 20, 2012, when I pulled one of my famous "Being Dumb So You Don't Have To" moves. The good news -- I learned how to track downloads with Google Analytics.

One of these days, I'm going to re-name this site "Being Dumb So You Don't Have To Be."

Here's what happened. I offered a recent storyline to my readers as a digital download (PDF and MOBI versions) to test the waters for an idea I've been knocking around in my head.

Remembering Rich Stevens' impressive success with a free iBooks offering recently, I rushed to my Web stats the morning after I launched the project, eagerly looking for the section in which I could find stats on the downloads of those two files -- onlt to find that no such section exists. No worries, that's what Google Analytics is for, right? Nope.

It turns out that you must do a little forethought if you want to track the downloads of a certain type of file.

Now I know. And so do you. Too late for me, but (hopefully) right on time for you.

Here's how you do it

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Luggage guidelines - updated for 2013

With convention season upon us once again, I thought it would be a good idea to update the luggage guidelines applied by American air carriers.

Updated as of February 2013, here are the list of baggage fees being charged by major American airlines (excluding special programs or privileges) for travel within the United States. All of the below restrict luggage to a maximum of 62 linear inches* and 50 lbs (except Spirit, which draws the line at 40 lbs.).

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14 Blocks -- update

I've long endorsed 14Blocks.com as a way of optimizing and planning your Tweets. They've updated their dashboard and I seem to have lost a lot of the functionality that I used to rely on. I'm withdrawing my endorsement until I see how this shakes out.

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Webcomics.com Survey - Convention Plans

It has been a little while since we did a survey, and with one of the first major shows of the year, Emerald City Comicon, around the corner, this might be a good idea to get a feel for where most members are standing in regards to personal appearances and conventions.

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Web Design Hot Seat: GameStuff and Urban Jungle

This is the fourth installment in the Web Design Hot seat. Same rules as all of the Hot Seat critiques. I'll discuss the participant's work and then open the conversation up to the group at large. Each header contains a link to the comic's Web site, and each image is a thumbnail you can click to see a larger version of the image.

The sites I'm looking at for this round are great examples of what I think really works for (a) Horizontal and (b) Square or vertical comic Web sites. They both do the following...