British Humanist Association Membership discovered: one person in TWELVE THOUSAND in the UK

From the desk of admin ·April 30, 2007 at 4:30 pm · Filed under Humanism / Secularism

Following on from my post about having discovered the membership of the National Secular Society, I have found the corresponding figures for the British Humanist Association.

I could find no figures on the website, so it was necessary to root around in the Annual Reports submitted to the Charity Commission by the BHA.

The statement below is from the 2005 Annual Report (PDF 300k)(*):

Membership numbers rose from 4151 to 5138 during the year.

For the headline figure I have assumed a 60 million UK population, and that no BHA members live abroad, giving an exact ratio of 1 per 11678 people.

Previous BHA Annual reports have not - as far as I can tell - included membership figures.

The Churches almost all publish exhaustive statistics every year.

Currently the BHA website front page is claiming a humanist constituency of 17 million. Click on the screen to enlarge.

Hmmmmm. Go figure.

(*) As explained on the Wardman Wire “About” page, it is site policy to make local copies of referenced documents, to avoid “leeching” bandwidth from other websites, and to make sure that the material remains available. In this case, government websites have a history of moving around repeatedly, so it is especially necessary.

Tags: british humanist association, bha membership

[tags]british humanist association, bha membership[/tags]

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Website Statistics Tests: Do a Comparison in May

From the desk of admin ·April 30, 2007 at 12:02 pm · Filed under 100 Days to Better Blogging, Hints and Tips

This is a very quick reminder for those of you who are interested in my articles about finding alternatives for the Sitemeter statistics service, after Sitemeter started serving 3rd party tracking cookies.

I have reported briefly on Go Stats, Extreme Tracker, StatCounter and 103Bees.

Today is the end of the month, when all good bloggers analyse their statistics.

Advice For Uses of Extreme Tracker and 103 Bees

My experience was that these stwo ervice were likely to be seriously underestimating your traffic - so you may be seriously underclaiming traffic or undercharging for adverts etc. I suggest running a comparison in May. But the comparison counter needs to be installed today.

I will give more detailed results later this week, but - for comparison purposes over the whole month of May - I recommend that you install a StatCounter in your template. StatCounter performed far better than these two services, and may be used invisibly.

This will allow you to make a private comparison over the whole of May, and may give a better traffic estimate.

[tags]statcounter, web statistics service, sitemeter alternatives, alternatives to sitemeter, underestimating traffic, iain dale[/tags]

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Quote of the Day: A Focus Group for Mr Blair

From the desk of admin ·April 30, 2007 at 8:03 am · Filed under Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

Matthew D’Ancona, on the Today programme on Radio 4, this morning:

It is Tony Blair’s 10th Anniversary of Power tomorrow. The elections will be a final focus group on his premiership, and a first focus group on Gordon Brown”.

Quite. Remember it when you vote.

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On the agenda for week beginning 30/4/2007 at The Wardman Wire

From the desk of admin ·April 30, 2007 at 7:31 am · Filed under Uncategorized

This post is to let you know what will be happening this week.

I’ll be publishing an article looking in more detail at why UK Political Blogs are vanishing from Google UK - our most popular search engine. There will be another article published on Tuesday giving come hints and tips about what you can actually do to rescue your blog from Google UKs murky depths.

Now that I have finished the article series about Favicons and How to use them for political blogs , I will be wrapping up a couple of other series of articles.

The blog will be Reporting the Results of the tests on Statistics Services for people who wish to move away from Sitemeter. I have tested Go Stats, Extreme Tracker, StatCounter and 103Bees.

There’ll also be a wrap-up article cmpleting my series about the Expansion of the Labour Blogosphere. I have written three articles in this series so far:

1. Labour blog explosion: I’ll take the Slow Road
2. Political Blogging: What Measurements to Use
3. Labour Blog Explosion? Crunching the Numbers

I will also be officially launching a major project aiming to help political bloggers work more effectively, called 100 Days to Better Blogging . This will be a series of daily (or almost daily) articles looking at all aspects of blogging. The project will consolidate a number of articles I have already published, and also include topics such as how to publicise your blog, and appropriate ways of monetising a political blog.

[tags]week ahead on the wardman wire, week ahead, national secular society, favicons and how to use them[/tags]
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Cartoon - Stand Up, Speak Up or Shut Up?

From the desk of admin ·April 30, 2007 at 5:37 am · Filed under Cartoon

I can’t decide whether this is blogging, politics or just political blogging .

- Credit: Weblog Cartoons - Dave Walker.

Tags: nothing to say, stand up, speak up, shut up, blogging

[tags]blogging, ]nothing to say, stand up, speak up, shut up[/tags]

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Favicons and How to Use them for your website - Article Series

From the desk of MattWardman ·April 29, 2007 at 11:32 am · Filed under 100 Days to Better Blogging, Hints and Tips, Political Blogging

Favicons are the small images that appear alongside your web address in a web browser.

This article is the summary / introduction for a series about how to use favicons as a way of publicising your website.

The first article in the series explains the basics about favicon and how to add a favicon to your web page.

The second article shows how the process is different for sites using Google’s Blogger platform; you need your own filestorage to hold your favicon image file. This article also looks at favicons in use by different UK political parties.

Finally, the third article describes the features of a great favicon, and explains how you an design one.

If you find the series useful, please leave a comment.

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How to design a great favicon to publicise your blog

From the desk of admin ·April 28, 2007 at 2:32 pm · Filed under 100 Days to Better Blogging, Hints and Tips, Political Blogging

This is the third article in my series about favicons, and how to use them on your blog. I have covered how to create a favicon, and how to add a favicon to a Blogger account.

This article looks at the features of a good favicon, and suggests how you can make sure that your favicon stands out from the crowd.

The previous articles in this series are:

1. Here’s a quick way to add a favicon to your site
2. How to Make Your Blog Stand out - add a Favicon to Blogger

Some example of icons for you to study

I have copied some “MyBlogLog” visitor panels into this article, and shown them at reducing sizes - so that you can easily see how some icons stand out from the crowd.

I have resized the three images, so that each icon is approximately:

• 96×96 pixels -the standard mybloglog size.
• 32×32 pixels - the larger “favicon” display size.
• 16×16 pixels - the smaller “favicon” display size.

Where do Favicons appear

Favicons appear in a few different places:

• On the tab of a tabbed web broswer.
• Next to the web address in the address bar.
• In the history of the web pages you have visited.

These favicons are sized at eiether 16×16 or 32×32 pixels - depending on the context.

What does a Favicon do

The jobs of a favicon are quite clear, but a reminder never goes amiss:

• A favicon should stand out from the crowd - for example so that your site is visible when there are a number of windows open in a tabbed browser.
• A favicon should in some way relate to your identity - it is an advert.
• A favicon should be clear - it should give a simple message.

Tags: political blogging, favicon, design a great favicon, publicise your blog, what is a favicon, great favicon, conservative party, labour party, liberal democrat party, libdem, ulster unionist party, Liberal Democrats, snp, ukip, green party, blogger off campaign, trades union congress, tuc 100 days to better blogging

[tags]political blogging, favicon, design a great favicon, publicise your blog, what is a favicon, great favicon, conservative party, labour party, liberal democrat party, libdem, ulster unionist party, Liberal Democrats, snp, ukip, green party, blogger off campaign, trades union congress, tuc 100 days to better blogging[/tags]

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