The Future of PyQt by Example
Three years ago, I started a series of long posts called "PyQt by Example". It reached five posts before I abandoned for a series of reasons that don't matter anymore. That series is coming back starting next week, rewritten, improved and extended.
It will do so in a new site, and the "old" posts will be retired to an archive page. Why? Well, the technologies used in some of them are obsolete or don't quite work nowadays. So, the new versions will be the preferred ones.
And while I am not promising anything, I have enough written to make this something quite longer, more nicely layouted, more interesting and make it cover more ground. BUT, while doing some checks on the traffic statistics for the old posts, some things popped out.
- This was very popular
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About 60% of my site's traffic goes to those five posts. Out of about 1200 posts over 12 years, 60% of the viewers go to the 0.4% of the pages. That is a lot.
- It's a long tail
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The traffic has not decreased in three years. If anything, it has increased
So, all this means there is a desire for PyQt documentation that is not satisfied. I am not surprised: PyQt is great, and the recommended book is not free, so there is bound to be a lot of demand.
And, here's the not-so-rosy bit: I had unobtrusive, relevant, out-of-the-way-but-visible ads in those pages for more than two years. Of the 70000 unique visitors, not even one clicked on an ad. Don't worry, I was not expecting to get money out of them (although I would love to some day collect a $100 check instead of having google hold my money for me ad eternum).
But really? Not even one ad click? In more than two years, thousands of people? I have to wonder if I just attract cheap people ;-)
I wanted to be the first... but where are the ads?
Not there anymore. And anyway, asking for clicks is against the google adsense TOS.
Your lack of ad clicks may be attributable to AdBlock, which I'm given to understand is incredibly popular among technical viewers (such as programmers). If or when you put ads back in your website, ask your viewers to turn it off (best way I've seen is to put a polite request in the ad space if the ads don't load).
Programmers don't click on ads. Post your cute cat photos to attract clicking people.
http://www.useit.com/alertb...
That was written in 1997, in the age of manual banner ads in geocities. Online advertising does generate revenue (even if a negligible amount). The other 40% of the traffic generated 100% of the revenue, after all.
Looking forward to the posts, I just started a project that is making use of PySide.
put a http://flattr.com button on your site or even on each post. i think it is more profitable and less annoying than ads (without adblock)
Heh, why not. I'll add it soonish.
Keep up the good work
After just finishing going through the five existing tutorials, with a few tweaks for differences I found and PySide, I came here to see if there was anything indicating any history... imagine my surprise when I read this! Greatly looking forwards to seeing the new output.
Any progress or news on this, mister ?.
yes :-)
I want to do some infrastructure work to make a decent site that doe justice to the content. Slow work, but it's looking good!
Amazing!. Is gonna be very nice to have stuff like this. The documentation or examples or tutorials of PyQt are not so good, or outdated or not complete enough. So your stuff is gonna be awesome I guess. Good idea to develop an infrastructure site for this.
How is it going with your new site, any news?
I only found this site a minute ago and this entry sounds pretty interesting. Are there any news regarding these tutorials? Where is that new site?
And about ads: I am not sure if I represent the majority, but I do use AdBlock and besides, I would much rather give some money to the people *directly* not via some ad from which the authors might only get a tiny percentage. In other words: Putting some button for micro payment next to each article would make me think about (and probably actually use ) them, but ads would not.
I've been on the prowl for months looking for the way to connect python output/ input to a Qt GUI with two windows, a small one to enter text and a larger one for the output from the app. I have to date found nothing.. There is of course the Qt docs for C++, but it is like reading ancient hieroglyphs. I can not make heads or tails out of it??? The PyQt docs are pretty much just a slightly modified version of the Qt docs and just as impossible for me to decipher.. WTF? If you would be so kind as to address this in one of your future articles I will be forever in your debt.
I am not sure I understand what you are describing.