New feature on front end of site: flag counter

[Kirsten]

I had to disable the little map we once had that showed where our visitors were coming from because it used some invasive tracking cookies.  I found this new one that seems to be more benign.  It looks like mostly they operate without cost to us by getting a link back to their site (which is only fair), and then they have advertising on their site to pay for their costs.  It's kind of fun.

Before anyone gets too excited about all the international hits, if you check out the flags those from Russia, China, Turkey, etc are most likely spammers looking for someplace to post comments (which I've disabled Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha).  The hits from the US, UK (and and occasionally other parts of Europe), and Australia are all legit.  We regularly have visitors from there as well as Canada, South and Central America, and parts of Africa.

[Kirsten]

Hey, I just found out you can drill down on the US section and find the count by state.  In the last 24 hours, we've had hits from 36 different states!  http://s07.flagcounter.com/countries/iYs5

[Kirsten]

Hey, if you click on a country flag from the list of countries, you get interesting information about that country, including climate, population, literacy, languages, life expectancy, etc.

Example:  http://flagcounter.com/factbook/us

[Kirsten]

Just over 2,000 hits on the front end of the site in the last week.

40 different countries are represented.
All 50 US states and the District of Columbia are represented.
Seven provinces of Canada (correct me, but I think that's all there are) are represented.

It should be noted that that is not 2,000 brand new visitors to the site.  Just 2,000 unique individual visitors.  The gizmo didn't start keeping track until a week ago so it has no way of knowing who the "regulars" are for our site.  We won't get as many added next week.  But still, think about it:  in a single week over 2,000 different people have visited SDC.  Yeah, some of them were bots, some even spam bots, but still, it boggles the mind.