One of my visitors recently noted some interesting problems on my blog, writing in response to my recent post on how to speed up my blog:

I just noticed something very strange on your blog. Whenever I click on a link with my middle mouse button, which should open it in a new tab, it not only opens the new tab, but also redirects to that link in the same tab your blog is.

I suspect it has something to do with your payperpost tracker, because whenever I click with any of the mouse buttons the page starts loading and in the status bar it says: Waiting for tracker.payperpost.com…

Have fun correcting this problem 😀

Well, it is time to come clean on the oddities. I was helping the Payperpost team test the statistics side of their new Argus system for managing the Payperpost Websites. While the system is under wraps for the time being, there are some general tips on what Argus is/will be:

The focus now though is well and truly on Argus. We have just 2 months to get together the most amazing overhaul you’ve ever seen and bind in a bunch of new technology we have that we feel you guys desperately need. For everyone this is a fantastic opportunity to right wrongs, and to make PayPerPost.com everything we always dreamed it would be. …

…The end result will be a fast, highly scalable application that can cope with massive growth of the user-base. The resulting application will also be highly maintainable, and uses an architectural design we’ve come up with that will also allow us to scale up and down the dev team on demand without suffering a productivity hit.

We’re talking here about a system that is free of bugs, that is snappy to use, that does pretty much everything most of you have asked for it to do, and then some. …

… Above all else though, we’ve listened to you. You want hundreds of opps. You want a higher quality network. You want more opportunities to get your brand out (if you’re an advertiser) and more ways to make money (if you’re a postie). Argus addresses those desires.

You can read more about the ongoing testing process here, what Argus might be here, and generally search for information on the boards here. The original announcement was in October.

Since few people are giving much actual information away, I’m not sure what preparations are needed, or if Payperpost in its current form will continue alongside or be merged into ‘Argus’. Well, its coming next month so we’ll see…

In the meantime, I had to remove the new tracking code that Payperpost provides and re-add the old one. Behavior is now back to normal. I also offed an email talking about the problems to Daniel explaining the problem. Let’s see what he says.

…. I must admit that I have removed the code temporarily because of the strange behavior that it exhibits on my blog.

For example, it is continually contacting Argus for almost EVERY reason, including screen scrolls, clicks on a word, clicks on anywhere on the blog, and worst of all, right and middle clicking buttons have had their function curtailed to opening the link. This behavior is too obtrusive as a form of tracking, and I’m not sure at the moment if it’s worth it to inconvenience my visitors so much.

One visitor wrote and said: … (as above)

While I might be willing to try this out on a smaller blog, with fewer visitors, it is causing problems as it is. So I have removed the tracking code for the time being. I’d appreciate your comments.

Best Wishes
Kenneth