Behind the Scenes

Spambots are smart. Apparently there's a lot of money in plastering comment threads with ads for counterfeit watches, penis pumps, etc. The CAPTCHA system we use on DNN to test for humans is pretty good and catches the vast majority of spambots. But it's not perfect, as we saw just today when someone vomited Ugg boots all over our site.

I got a report recently that people were annoyed by the fact that when you use the login link at the upper right of the site, you get pushed off to your account page. Readers don't want to go their dumb ol' account page; they want to stay on the page they were on! How else can they make the witty comment they had in mind when they decided to log in in the first place??

Among the most remarkable stats in World Cup By The Numbers were DNN's website visitation totals, which were far above any previous event's audience. We thought it'd be interesting to dig a little deeper into our audience stats to see just who was watching (and more to the point, from where).

As our Roller Derby World Cup coverage weekend got under way, we knew something extraordinary was happening, but it wasn't until we started actually looking at the data that we realized just how big this event really was for the modern derby world. We thought you might like to see some of the numbers behind the event and DNN's coverage.

Tonight's live broadcast of Denver vs. Bay Area from RollerCon will mark a moment in history, as DNN Labs conducts a new experiment. This evening you will be able to read textcasts of the game in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

When one of the DNN partners gets married, it is customary to do a shot. Please raise your shot glasses to DNN's Man Behind The Curtain, Gnosis, and the lovely Sara, the world's most patient and kind derby widow. We at DNN would like to wish them many happy returns, and all our derby love!

Watch this space all this week for a new DNN Labs experiment! We'll be bringing you live video of the Jackie Daniels training track daily throughout RollerCon, supported by textcast.

Four years ago, Justice Feelgood Marshall launched DerbyNewsNetwork.com to address what he saw as a gaping hole in media treatment of modern roller derby: the absence of straightforward, journalistic coverage of competition within the sport.

Regular users of DNN may have noticed a little bumpiness in the website's performance over the past few weeks. Our audience growth continues unabated, placing further strain on our server, whose OS install is also getting a little long in the tooth. We've been aiming for some time to spruce up the workings, and we're now putting those plans into action.