Business and industry-related information.

3D rendering, design, media, and technology news.

I’ve been asked on numerous occasions if I would be able to provide someone with an example contract that I use prior to commencing on a project. As much as I would like to help others out, I consider my contracts part of LunarStudio’s intellectual property – these are pieces which I’ve worked on and just like all of my work, I do not simply hand these items out for free. I’ve spent years working on them. While most of my contracts are cookie-cutter/boilerplate, my contracts are continuously getting revised on a per-project basis. However, without providing you with the exact wording, I’ll outline many of the items which my contracts do cover. My contracts with some proper rewording can cover other avenues of freelancing and business – it is not simply limited to my field of art.

I feel that contracts are a necessity in conducting work. Not only do they protect you, but they should also protect the individuals or companies that you are going to do work for. They also lend you and others a sense of legitimacy and professionalism to your business – especially if you are just starting out. They should also clearly outline the scope of your deliverables – this way if someone asks for unreasonable demands outside of the original scope which was agreed upon, you can simply point back to your contract. It also shows a potential client that you are responsible for your own work as well as that of others.

“Word of mouth” agreements and emails are also viable between two parties and are admissible in a court of law (at least here in the United States.) However, “word of mouth” is often harder to prove, so the burden lies on you or the other party to prove their case should a disagreement ever arise. It’s simply much easier to take 5-minutes to a half-hour to send off a contract instead of going back and forth over emails, phone calls, and communication issues. Plus, having a contract that outlines specifics of a job helps delineate which obligations you and the other party have towards one another.

I’d also recommend that you search the Internet for other contracts and ideas and see what other areas they may cover as well. As always, make sure your content is original and not simply copied from here or other sources. When in doubt, you can always consult an attorney.

Here’s a brief outline of what my contracts cover:

1. Project Scope:

This details the overall scope of a proposed project. For example, if someone asks for a single exterior rendering of a condominium, I’ll mention it here and any additional information related to this requested project.

2. Delivery Date:

If there is a set date set by a client, I will mention it here. If there isn’t one, I’ll mention how long I plan on spending on a particular project.

3. Project Stages:

This is an optional section. Since I encounter a lot of people who are unfamiliar with my process (or the rendering process in general), I like to lay out step-by-step what  we will do when provided with plans, at what point we will send over a piece of artwork for review, at what point a client can or should request changes, and at what point we will deliver the final artwork. I found that if you don’t outline your process clearly, people have a tendency to keep coming back and asking for more changes as a lot of people tend to think our process is a simple push of the button when in-fact a seemingly “simple” change can add days to a project and push off deliverables for other clients.

4. Costs:

Here I’ll mention the costs of a project. Sometimes I’ll break it down into stages so that a client can pick and choose which elements they want to proceed with. I’ll also mention the total estimate.

5. Terms of Payment and Delivery:

This can be broken down into sub-topics:

  1. Payment due upon delivery. This is my general practice otherwise you’ll end up playing the game of waiting for a client’s client to pay in order for you to get paid. I’ve seen this stretch out for a whole year once. Of course, there’s exceptions to this rule. But if someone really wants to work with you, they will bring this issue up at the beginning. Some people will have a clause for 15 or 30 days. These terms almost never get paid on-time. I find that it is safer just to leave “payment due upon delivery” in there.
  2. Watermarking. Reserve the right to watermark all of your images. It’s your work until you get paid then you can remove your watermark. I find that this process works best.
  3. Change rates. I feel that hourly is best. Of course, you could have just built this into your initial estimate and inflated your numbers, but that doesn’t always look good. I know people that charge $150/hour for changes. If you’re presented with incorrect information in the beginning or someone changes their mind, that can push off your delivery date for other clients. You need to be reimbursed for your additional time and efforts. People have a tendency to assume that in the field of art, a change might only take a few minutes when in fact some items might add additional hours to even weeks to a project. You need to mention your change rate in all of your contracts. If a request is truly small, you can choose to look the other way but at least you have these terms to fall back upon. The change rates also has a tendency to indirectly force your client to provide you with consolidated and correct information at a project onset versus later down the road.
  4. Other payment terms. On large projects, you may want to ask for 1/3 to a 1/2 of the project’s total for retainer. If you hire out a crew of people or sub-contractors to work with you and you expect to project to last for a couple of months, you’ll need to have some income as well as an assurance that a potential client is not going to waste your time and money. The client is paying to reserve your time.
  5. Payment delivery methods. You may accept Paypal, money orders, checks, etc. Let your client know who and how to make out their payment to.

6. Required Assets:

From this section and below, I start to get more involved in my contracts. The first page is a quick summary. The items listed above are usually a quick summary someone doesn’t have to wade through five pages of text.

Here, I mention that a client is expected to provide me with the latest information and plans in order for me to carry out my work. I had a situation this past winter in which a client provided me with some plans that were for the wrong building. I spent almost a week modeling the building interior only to find out that they had provided the wrong plans. I shouldn’t be expected in this situation to start over from scratch without billing out for their mistake. It’s like bringing in a car to an automotive mechanic, having him replace a transmission, and then telling him afterwards, “oops, I gave you the wrong car.” Either way, they’re still going to charge you for that. In turn, the client should be responsible for providing up-to-date and accurate information even if something is still in progress.

7. Deliverables:

In the deliverables section, I’ll mention exactly what I will provide. For example, all still images will be provided at 3200×2400 resolution. I might mention that all animations are rendered at 29.9 frames per second and at a resolution of 720×486. By mentioning this ahead of time, it prevents someone from coming back and asking me to render out a 30,000 resolution image which might take a couple of additional days to process and that I cannot bill out for and me even impact somebody else’s project. It also may prevent having to render out a HD animation that could add additional weeks to a project. As I said before, people tend to think architectural rendering work is a push of the button. If you don’t lay out your terms otherwise, you can find yourself spending an extra month working for free.

8. Artwork Accuracy:

In my particular field, you have to remind clients that your artwork is ultimately artwork at the end of the day and that it is not intended to be a 100% accurate representation of the final product. Most clients are well aware of this. However, some people that are unfamiliar with the process (in particular photorealism) expect 100% accurate results which is impossible to achieve in reality. If you’ve been in the field as long as I have, you may encounter a situation in which a “green isn’t green enough.” What they may not understand is that readjusting a final might require a rerendering, which can add an additional day’s worth of work or more. You have to let them know that your artwork is just a representation. This may protect you from demands which get out of control.

9. Artwork Ownership:

I reserve the rights to own all of my work. My work is commissioned for use by others, but I actually own what I produce. If a client pays for my images, they are entitled to use these images for their own purposes. I stipulate that I am allowed to use the work I produce for marketing and any other purposes I deem permissible. Of course, there’s exceptions to this rule but ideally you hold steadfast to your ownership. If you have ever worked with a high-end art rep, they insure the same exact clauses where they are the ones who are entitled to art ownership and not the company which is hiring you. This is probably the one area of my contract that is often questioned.

10. Proprietary Ownership:

You should retain all rights to the actual working files and shouldn’t bend from this rule. If you purchase a model library or stock photography to be used in your scene, you are generally required by law not allowed to redistribute those items to another company or client without them having purchased those model libraries for themselves. I’ve had clients ask for my actual working 3D files and have had to refuse their requests. This can also protect your work methodology and intellectual property. Having someone ask for your working files is the equivalent of hiring a painter to paint your house, then asking them for their sanding equipment, ladders, paint brushes, rollers, and paint buckets after the fact – in the real-world, that is not going to happen. The same rule should apply here.

11. Additional Legal Information:

Here I mention additional legal information such as court fees, attorney fees, arbitration, severability, “acts of god” (in case my office gets swept up by a tornado, fire, or flood), liability, etc. I have roughly five detailed paragraphs regarding these items. It is my suggestion that you search the Internet for other contracts which can help you out in this area in case an issue ever arises. Hopefully, none of this ever occurs, but it is always better to be safe than sorry.

12. Termination:

Here, I reserve the right to terminate a project. An example of this may be that a client provides you with completely incorrect information leading to an additional month’s worth of work that bleeds into another projects schedule. Another example might be that someone strings you along a whole year and keeps promising that they will provide you with more information. If a project becomes unreasonable, you should be able to terminate that project. Again, hopefully this never occurs.

13. Cancellation Charges:

I’ve heard of situations in which a project is agreed upon by a developer and that an artist reserves their time to work on their project. They hire out a crew and they start to work on it. Later on, the developer finds out that their project has been denied for zoning reasons, etc. Suddenly, they want to cancel the project and not pay your company for the time you reserved and possibly had to say no other clients. That is money you have lost. Do to this unfortunate circumstance, you should have a cancellation clause in your contracts. It doesn’t have to be the full amount (mine isn’t), but instead could be a percentage of the total. Your time is your money – and people pay to reserve your time and expertise. It’s unfortunate that this should ever occur, but your business should not be put in jeopardy on the account of someone else or unforeseen circumstances.

Summary

I hope that this article regarding my artist contracts helps others out. I think you can clearly see from what I’ve written how a contract really does help both you and your potential client. A simple phone call conversation or email leaves out most of these details and that’s why I prefer outlining all of these various situations prior to even working on anything. I’d also recommend looking over other contracts you can find through an Internet search to see what additional items may be relevant to your field of work and expertise.

3D rendering, design, media, and technology news.

Background Story

I finally got my hands on an actual base-model iPad yesterday. I was going to mention it but waited because I didn’t want to come off as bragging. Plus, I wanted to give myself some time before jumping to any conclusions.

I didn’t pre-order one so I had to drive out early to a Best Buy around the corner from me and wait in line. Sales were to go on at 9:00 AM, so I left the door at 7:30. I didn’t know what to expect. If there was going to be a huge line, then I would’ve turned the car around and wait the sales-hype out just like most ordinary people. I figured that if the line wasn’t that bad, I could surf the web on my phone and look up some information on WordPress plugins and functionality. This way, waiting in line wouldn’t be a completely frivolous waste of time.

Turns out that there was only one other person waiting in his car and a Best Buy employee sweeping the parking lot. The employee said that they had them and we briefly talked about the potentials of such a device.

I got to chatting with the lone other guy sitting in his car waiting for the doors to open. Turns out to be a very interesting fellow – he was a research scientist for the Department of Defense at the MIT Robotics Lab who was working on a landmine-sniffing robot. He explained that he was new to the area and bored out of his mind because he didn’t know anyone around here.

So we waited. 9:00 AM roles around and the employee comes out of the store and doesn’t look too happy. He walked up to us and explained that every store in the area has had shipping problems and that no one was going to get them. The scientist standing next to me explains that he wanted to see if the manager could get us a “ticket” for waiting instead, or to see if there’s any other stores that can hand one out. So we end up waiting another half hour while the manager calls around but to no avail. He ends up writing the both of us a ticket which says we need to make the purchase before 5:00 PM that very day.

I head back home and a hour later, I receive the phone call that they just received them so I head back out. There were only three left on the shelves, and one of them was going to shortly be in my hands.

Reasons Why I Purchased an iPad

The reasons why I bought the iPad are to serve several different functions:

  1. Development.
  2. Testing.
  3. Surfing the web or watching movies in my bathroom, on the back porch, or in my bed.
  4. An extra device to have running while my computers are processing.
  5. Future potential for an extra monitor.
  6. Future direction for the way desktop computers and laptops are headed.
  7. Last but not least, I simply love gadgets.

My iPad Opinion and Review

It wasn’t just hype driving my infatuation with the potential of this device. Shortly after Apple announced it, I had written my own article stating why I thought this type of device is the direction the future is headed-in. A lot of the 3D artists, programmers, and Facebook friends had debates on the forums about this device – a good number of them laughing at it and stating, “why would I want that sort of thing?” I like to think of myself as a bit of a forward-thinker – while some people tend to only look at present potential, I tend to look towards the future and see how something could eventually be applied.

Within moments of unboxing the iPad and turning it on, I was instantly hooked. The display is absolutely gorgeous – a vibrant back-lit monitor which was easy-to-read. The other noticeable thing is that it fits “perfectly” well in my hands, and is extremely light-weight. The responsiveness to rotating is and touching buttons is incredible. To be completely honest, I wasn’t expecting too much since I had already owned a 2nd generation iPhone (non-3Gs) which could be slow and intermittent at times. I had originally thought, “well, if it’s twice as fast then I’ll be happy with it.” While I don’t have benchmarks to go on, it seems (to me at least) to be 15X faster than my iPhone and that’s no joke. It’s lightning-fast. So fast in-fact, that it seems to dust my main dual Intel Xeon 5355 while surfing with Firefox (I do have a bunch of development plugins running on this comp.)

As for connecting everything up, it was extremely simple. That’s kind of to be expected from Apple products these days. They’re dummy-proof. I was up and fully running within 10-minutes. The best part was that it somehow came fully-charged.

As for navigating the iPad, it can simply be described as intuitive. As anyone that owns an iPhone or iPad readily knows, clicking on things becomes second nature quickly.

When it comes to wireless connectivity, I have a D-Link gigabit router with wireless 802.11 N. The only thing I have connected to the wireless portion is my phone. I thought for the last couple of years that my wireless setup was rather shitty – perhaps it had something to do with my setup or the fact that the signal was bouncing around corners and through walls. In some sick way, I’m proud to say that it turns out that my iPhone wirelesss connection was shitty. My setup is completely fine. I can actually wander around the entire house and backyard with a full five bars with the iPad unlike the iPhone which gets three bars on the back porch with the occasional dropout and constantly intermittent lag. When it comes to wireless, there is absolutely no problem whatsoever. It works better than I had ever even imagined.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not videos were going to  play well at that resolution. While surfing YouTube on high-def, the picture was impeccable. I really don’t see how (or why) you would want to squeeze even more resolution into a device that big.

There has also been criticism amongst people about the lack of Flash support. Flash tends to drive many websites either with navigation and/or animations. It is also a common video player – the likes of which Hulu or Comcast Fancast uses. While that is a major bummer, most of the websites I did browse didn’t even have Flash enabled so it was something I really didn’t notice. If Apple refuses to support Flash down the road, I can easily see video websites switching over the HTML 5 protocol simply because of this. What really sucks is that now I think I need to reprocess some of my own animations for my website into a HTML 5 format or .mp4. In some ways, they’re forcing people to convert. It’s either sink or swim technology-wise. It has already changed the Internet’s landscape. One thing I do hate from Apple is their Quicktime video player. I believe Quicktime does put out the best quality video, however it comes at a very high-cost of having to install it and the web interface on Windows x64 machines being buggy.

When it comes to applications, there’s plenty available. Whatever runs on the iTouch or iPhone will pretty much run on an iPad, albeit at half-resolution. But there’s plenty of other ones which have been converted over to the new iPad interface. It has also made other applications useless. For instance, I had a Facebook application for the iPhone and now I simply don’t need it. I can just connect to the original Facebook page via the browser. So I’m actually storing less apps making memory more or less trivial unless I want to add libraries of music and movies.

One application that piqued my interest was an application called “Free Books.” I downloaded it for free and was utterly amazed to find over 30,000 free books whose copyrights have expired. If you’re an avid reader, than this device alone has more than paid for itself. It features almost all of the classics, including many from my favorite author Herman Hesse. I cannot even imagine reading books on something else now. The digital library has certainly come of age – if you love the old mystique of dusty libraries in hard-covered leather-bound books, then it is going to make them look like old Victorolas and 8-track cassettes. I couldn’t help but marvel at how much money on books I would have saved back in college as well as having to lug them up a hill.

The question often arises, “do I really need this device?” The answer is no. People do not need this device any more than they need a hole in the head. Philosophically (and pragmatically-speaking), the only “things” people really need are food, water, and shelter. So no, you do not need this device. As for “wanting” this device, I’d think many of us would want this device, but perhaps aren’t willing to pay the money for something that can be viewed as a luxury – especially in uncertain economic conditions. However, this is one “luxury” that I can guarantee is here to stay. The fact is that most of us do not need laptops – the majority of people only surf the web, watch videos, and check their emails. Most aren’t going to be rendering or crunching hard data (and even that will eventually become a thing of the past.) Over time, there will be other competitors and similar devices that will fill this market. With cloud computing sitting there on the horizon, expect this design “niche” to become the de-facto standard for most computers moving forward.

3D rendering, design, media, and technology news.

A. You need something with speakers. B. Do not play this at work. C. The language is colorful so shield your parents and children from this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_VtqtxCHY

3D rendering, design, media, and technology news.

Introduction

Anyone that knows me knows that I’m not a big fan of outsourcing to imbalanced economies. I think it takes away high-tech jobs when the playing field isn’t level – and with the new “global” economy, the balance is far from being fair. I feel that there needs to be some throttling to the drain versus letting the flood gates wide open. But seeing that it is the way that it is, I decided to put my money where my mouth is.

For your information, this test is conducted on my own project and coming out of my own pocket. I am not taking any of my client’s work and sending it overseas. The risk and burden is completely on me.

For a few years now, I’ve considered taking my main website, LunarStudio and have it converted over to a WordPress site. LunarStudio actually predates most blogging/content management systems. It’s one of the first sites that was perfectly centered without the use of Flash – I know it was an unusual design at the time because I had to design it myself with no code to reference. Over the years, it has climbed high up on the search engine rankings and the format has been copied repeatedly. I’ve been hesitant to redesign the site because it is ranked so highly. In theory, the new WordPress site would like identical to the way it currently looks. I’d benefit from the WordPress conversion due to easier access to additional plugins such as metrics, forms, etc. The biggest benefit would be in my ability to update the website with newer work. As of now, it’s a labor-intensive manual process of resizing my images to several sizes, creating two separate thumbnails, watermarking, copying code, pasting, entering keywords, linking to other images, saving, then uploading. To be frank, it’s a royal pain in the ass. I would rather be able to just simply upload and not have to think about it.

The Scenario

Now, I could code the new template myself, but it would probably take a few days in order to do things right. There’s a lot of things which happen “under the hood” since it is mostly gallery and little text. This would have to be preserved. Also, I’m not too familiar with WordPress galleries and how that whole structure works. I’m sure I could figure it out, but that would take some additional time.

A few days ago, I started looking online for any easy suggestions as to how to convert a site over to WordPress as well as some pre-existing galleries for reference. At the top of the results were some links from a website called freelancer.com. I saw that another person had asked if anyone could perform a conversion for him, and I noted that the rates were extremely low. People were bidding in the $50-$200 range.One “freelancer” had over 150 10-star ratings and was willing to do this guy’s work for $75. I couldn’t help but think, “glad I’m not in website design…” The fact is that no one in the United States can compete with rates that low for a few days worth of work.

I couldn’t help but think, “well I can waste three days of my time or make it somebody else’s problem.” I’ve had a rather busy month of work and simply needed a break.

Now, I don’t feel bad about giving somebody that job overseas. The last I checked, the average salary pre-global economic meltdown in India was $3.50/hour US. Multiply that by eight hours and that gives you $28/day or $84 for three days. Keep in mind that a loaf of bread over there probably costs 15 cents compared to $2.50 here. In some other countries, $100 is more than some people make in entire month. My point is that money is relative to the cost of living depending on where you live. They may be doing pretty well for themselves all things considered.

So I signed up for freelancer.com and decided to give it a test. I added $150 to the account and posted the job. It read:

Description

Hi. I need parts of my static website, www.lunarstudio.com converted over to a WordPress template. I know WordPress fairly well, but I do not have the time to do this myself.

The pages which needed to become a template are the following:
https://www.lunarstudio.com/information/clients.html
https://www.lunarstudio.com/portfolio/architectural-renderings-commercial-interior.html
https://www.lunarstudio.com/information/about-us.html

You can probably use Flexi Pages Widget (unless you have a better suggestion) for the left-side Navbar, even a basic online template creator for the overall page structure, and a gallery plugin for the gallery page. Lightbox Plus is to be used for the lightbox.

I’d like it to be simple to use, clean, and retain all of my underlying SEO structure. I should be able to easily reuse these pages and insert my own information later. SEO is important!

Thank you and good luck bidding!

-Charles

Enter The Freelancer – 1st Day

I immediately received a reply from an individual in Pakistan regarding my project. He had close to 65 10-star ratings and the reviews were nothing short of stellar. I figured, “what could possibly go wrong, especially for that kind of money?” I confirmed him and he added me to messenger.

Within the first few minutes of us connecting, I was barraged with a two hour question and answer session.

I told him in the very beginning that it was fairly simple – “take website. Make website WordPress.”

But for whatever reason, that simple concept seemed to get lost in translation.I wondered why he even took the job as I thought I was pretty clear in the job description.

Questions aside, I was anxious to get moving along on this. I set up a dummy website with a WordPress install that he could work on. I gave him author status, an email address, and FTP access.

On top of all that, he suddenly insisted on having access to the database which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Now, if you know WordPress, there’s absolutely no reason why you need access to the database unless you are coding a plugin by hand. I wasn’t asking him to do that. I figured, “well, maybe he knows something that I don’t.”

So while I’m setting up all his access rights, he keeps on writing – asking me if I had things set up for him yet. Now he’s starting to get on my nerves.

Then he asks, “can you send me the money now?”

I replied, “what?!?”

“This is our first time working – I want to make sure you will pay.”

“Okay, let me check. Okay, I have it. I’m going to bed now. Talk to you tomorrow – I look forward to working with you.”

For $140 and considering that he had all those ratings, I didn’t want to sit there and argue with him. He already killed enough time, so I looked into freelancer.com a little closer and noticed that there was an escrow option.

I asked, “are you fine with me putting it into escrow?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Did you send me that information?”

“Yes I sent the access information to your email.”

And he hops offline.

Exit The Freelancer – 2nd Day

On the second day, I wake up, pour myself a cup of coffee, and hop on my computer to check emails. My computer automatically logs me on to messenger.

My new Pakistani friend starts to write immediately.

“Charles, I misquoted you. This is a lot more work than I expected.”

“If you can, perhaps you can put more money in my account. Of course this is not a requirement.”

A sinking feeling starts to come about.

I answer with silence and now I’m starting to get a little peeved.

A few minutes later he writes again, “I need access to your main lunarstudio website.”

Now I’m beginning to realize this guy is simply incompetent. I write back, “what?!? Why the heck do you need that? Just open up a browser, right-click and save as. No, you’re not getting access to my main website. No one does.”

“Okay okay okay.”

A couple of minutes later, he writes – “Okay – check your wordpress website. I have completed a page.”

I’m thinking, well he’s fast. I hop onto the blog which I set up for him to work on and it’s the default WordPress installation theme. The only thing he changed was to stick one of my pictures into the body. So I’m starting to think, well it’s probably a browser cache issue. So I start cleaning out my cache but nothing is changing. So I write him:

“It doesn’t look anything like my website!”

“Oh Charles, you told me not to worry about design.”

“I said, the design has already been created by me – all you needed to do is copy it…”

So I hop back on Freelancer.com and now I’m dead set on canceling this moron. I notice that the money I put into escrow has disappeared. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how and where the cancel button is.

He writes, “are you there?”

“Yeah – I’m here. I’m trying to figure out how to cancel you.”

“Okay okay okay. That is fine.”

“Where the hell is my money by the way? You took it out?!?”

“Yes but I can refund you right away. It’s done.”

On to Round Two

Fortunately, he did manage to refund me. While I haven’t posted all of our chat, I think he got the hint that I wasn’t going to play games with him. If he didn’t, I was going to trash his reviews. So the money is back in the account and I figured I’d give it another shot – this time I was going to carefully look through people’s portfolios and wait a few days before selecting someone.

Judging by my first day’s experience, working with this guy has been nothing short of a nightmare. Sure, he speaks some english. I can’t imagine working with someone that knows half as much. I don’t how much of it was actually miscommunication, how much of it was stupidity, and how much of it was him trying to scam. Asking for access to my database – that still has me puzzled. I did lock him into one container but as soon as I canceled, I removed all of his permissions. Was he trying to hijack my website to hold it ransom or did he simply get in over his head? I just don’t see how this guy could have 65 10-star ratings.

3D rendering, design, media, and technology news.

I’ve taken some screenshots of various logs and statistics regarding this website that I thought might be of some interest. Keep in mind that I switched hosts roughly a week ago in-between “real” work and toying around with a new setup. I haven’t really focused any energy into really promoting my websites – my philosophy is that if they rank great, then fantastic. If they don’t, then I have other things to do. Either way, monitoring traffic is still is a fun thing to do. I get a kick out of seeing if certain terms can rank in Google.

With this website, I’ve come across some interesting and unusual results:

Search engine rankings

Search Engine Rankings for Lunarlog

The screenshot above makes me LOL.

If I put a space between “Lunar” and “Log”, I rank #6 on an average Google search. Then again, I haven’t really tried to push this site.

“I don’t want iGoogle as my homepage.” LOL. I hate to say it but if you are typing that into Google, then you have some serious problems. Nowhere on my site do I even say that. So it’s completely mind-boggling how my article on setting up iGoogle as a homepage even pulls this phrase off the Internet.

“Transferring servers.” This is completely unexpected. In the course of humanity, how many people have typed in “Transferring servers” into a search engine? While it’s not “Tiger Woods” or “Miley Cyrus”, probably a lot. The more generic a term or a phrase is, the harder it is to get up there.

“Setting up an eStore.” Another generic technical phrase. Of course, I wanted this one to rank higher but I didn’t think it would climb to this point. It’ll probably go higher.

Overall Website Traffic

Overall Website Traffic

I’ve masked out a few of my websites. I still haven’t listed other ones. But you can get a brief glimpse into some of my sites (the Knol article shouldn’t be included.)

HDRSource took a slight tumble as I had some issues moving it over to the new server.

LunarStudio has always been high.

The thing to note is Lunarlog’s Visit percentage change. 317.50%. I’ll take it. It’s just going to continue to climb. I’ve posted a couple of links to my articles, but mainly the new server move combined with setup as well as occasionally turning out new articles is what caused this month’s spike.

Analytics Dashboard for Lunarlog

Analytics Dashboard

I know that’s not a whole heck of a lot of visits, but for two days and not having tried – again, I’ll take it. You don’t know if there’s only one person coming to your website, or several hundred. Of course, popular websites can range in the hundreds of thousands.

New visitors are pretty good. I’m more shocked by the returning visitors as the number over half. That means that they’re finding something on this website useful which is good to know.

The average visitor stays 3 minutes. Which means that they’re actually reading something. Wow. Thank you? Now only if you people would start leaving comments!

Average Time on Website

Average Time on Website

Another screenshot of the average time a viewer stays on this site. A few minutes is about the average length of an article so that sounds about right. What I find awesome is that the average viewer is now staying almost 2/3rds longer than the previous month.

International visits by country.

International Visits

This map is showing the amount of visitors by country based on their IP Address. It pretty much follows the “developed” world. Of course, english is my main language so I would expect traffic to be higher within the US. Plus I’m based in the United States.

Website Browser Usage

Website Browser Usage

Traffic from across two days. Most people are using Firefox. The rest of the browsers needs to be considered. The mobile apps such as Android-based phones – well they got cut-off here. I think there was one visitor from it. For now it’s not even worth putting efforts into designing this site to accommodate the more obscure browsers.

MaxCDN Data Transfer

MaxCDN Data Transfer

This graph shows the amount of data getting transferred from MaxCDN cloud servers for Lunarlog since it was implemented on this site within the past week. Basically, MaxCDN is hosting some of my content (mainly images and scripts) across the United States and in some foreign countries to help speed up my websites. I expect it to increase as it starts ranking higher.

MaxCDN City Data Transfers

MaxCDN City Data Transfers

This is a graph showing MaxCDN data transfers from their servers located in various cities. Their data center/servers in New York are getting hit the hardest. This NY server center also feeds the rest of New England.