We have recorded a demo screencast to let visitors take a peek inside DPEQ.net. If you want to spread the word, feel free to post it on your blog (here’s the code to embed and some screenshots).

Statistics and tracking are an important tool for every website, and especially for a social network where user interaction is the fuel that powers the community. While Google Analytics is a robust standard solution that is primarily aimed at marketing, there are other solutions with some bells and whistles Google doesn’t offer. A discussion on Hacker News called my attention to Clicky, a pretty cool service that offers exactly those feature Google Analytics is missing.

It has realtime statistics, you can track single users and there’s even a Google Maps integration the see where that user comes from. There’s only one drawback: to get the interesting features you have to upgrade to a paid version (whereas Goggle Analytics is completely free). I think I will go with the free trial for a while and then upgrade when traffic sets in. Hope this doesn’t last to long…

While this post from  Evan Williams is already some years old, it still holds true in almost every point (not very often you can call something on the internet a classic). But one point is important today more than ever and that’s #9: Be Agile! While developing, implementing new ideas which happen to cross your mind, tweaking the site layout and optimizing what you think might be sub-optimal it’s just to easy to loose track of how what your audience really wants. It will happen inevitably and when you find out, it tears you down. The only way to fight it is to analyze what went wrong and then adjust your course.  And it’s a lot easier when you know, you’re not the only one.