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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

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

The traf­fic has not de­creased in three years. If any­thing, it has in­creased

https://p.twimg.com/Aw0MHhoCAAAXmro.png:large

A long and tall tail.

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 ;-)

disqus_iEv2fygsEE / 2012-07-03 02:20:

I wanted to be the first... but where are the ads?

Roberto Alsina / 2012-07-03 03:48:

Not there anymore. And anyway, asking for clicks is against the google adsense TOS.

artanis00 / 2012-07-03 04:44:

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).

void / 2012-07-03 07:57:

Programmers don't click on ads. Post your cute cat photos to attract clicking people.

Tim Golden / 2012-07-03 11:39:
Roberto Alsina / 2012-07-03 12:25:

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.

null / 2012-07-03 12:25:

Looking forward to the posts, I just started a project that is making use of PySide.

payload / 2012-07-03 15:24:

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)

Roberto Alsina / 2012-07-03 15:49:

Heh, why not. I'll add it soonish.

Umroayyar / 2012-07-03 15:46:

Keep up the good work

Nick / 2012-07-07 19:05:

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.

Juan Rodríguez Monti / 2012-08-04 20:02:

Any progress or news on this, mister ?.

Roberto Alsina / 2012-08-04 20:59:

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!

Juan Rodríguez Monti / 2012-08-08 07:32:

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.

Marcus / 2012-09-27 15:06:

How is it going with your new site, any news?

Mrokii Khach / 2012-10-12 10:14:

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.

kenBrockman / 2013-02-12 16:22:

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.

Roberto Alsina / 2013-02-12 23:50:

I am not sure I understand what you are describing.


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