Tag: Notes on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project

Spike in Stats

spike
I enjoy looking at the stats for the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website. In addition to the number of hits on the site, they also show which pages are being looked at, how long each visitor is on the page, how many pages each visitor looks at, time of day, country that the visitor is from, and other stuff. One of these is the referrer, such as search engine, wikipedia pages, social media pages and the like. Lately I’ve been receiving a lot of visitors through the McMaster University portal. In the last few days there have been 144 visitors using the McMaster portal, and 100 of those were today between 2-4 pm, mostly viewing the same poem.

At other times that the site has been active (since 2001) I have noticed colleges and universities using the site through their portal, and I find it most gratifying to see it used by them. When I discovered a professor at a nearby university had been using the site in her course, I ended up giving a talk to her class about poetry in Niagara and its use in the social and historical record of the area.

So thanks, McMaster. If you’re a student there and have used the site, or if you’re the prof using the site as a teaching tool, please reach out (aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca) – I’d love to talk to you about how you are using it.

Many thanks,

Andrew

 

Niagara History and Poetry Podcast

 
 
history
I’ve talked about it for a while, but I’ve finally started up a podcast called Niagara History and Poetry, in which I discuss the history of Niagara Falls through the poetry that has been written about it.
The first episode is an introduction to the podcast, the second is about bears at the falls, and the third is about Captain Matthew Webb, who attempted to swim the rapids & whirlpool.

Click here for the video version

Click here for the audio version or go to your favourite podcast distributor and search for “Niagara Falls History & Poetry”

 
 
Please give it a listen, and feel free to comment, subscribe. like and share

Where are they coming from?

coming from

I have a plugin on the website to give various statistics about usage. I’ve noticed a couple of things this last week. When I look at the countries that people are visiting from, Ukraine, Russia, & Khazakhstan are in the top 10. There are usually just a handful of vistors that are not from Canada, the United States, or the United Kingdom.

Similarly, there are stats for the top referrers, usually topped by Google. This past week, however, the top referrer by far has been from McMaster University, although I can’t see from which department as you need login information to get any further in to their site. I know that sometimes my site is used in courses. I know, for example, that Niagara University has a course on Niagara Literature that uses the website, and also that the stats generally spike in September-October and again in January-February, coinciding with the beginning of academic terms.

Stats also spike when an individual who has a poem on the site is in the news. When Priscila Uppal, a well known poet and novelist died, I had about 1,200 hits on her poem Niagara Mermaids  on the day her death was announced, and they stayed high for a few days afterwards.

So if you’re dropping in from McMaster or anywhere else, I’d love to hear how you are using the site. You can drop a note in the comments, or email at aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. 

Cheers, Andrew

Moving from X/Twitter to Bluesky

I’m in the process of making the move to bluer skies with both my regular account and the Niagara Falls Poetry Project account. If you have an account over there, please feel free to follow either or both of my accounts – the personal one and the Niagara Falls Poetry Project one. I will be winding these accounts down over time.

The Niagara Falls Poetry Project website (the one you’re looking at now) will remain as the main site of the NFPP.

bluesky
Bluesky account information

“The Most Dedicated Scholar of Canada’s Niagara Region Culture”

Today I got a huge compliment from Terry Trowbridge, a sociolegal scholar with many poems and scholarly articles published in a number of diverse journals. Terry commented on my Major Research Project (MRP), completed at Brock University as part of the requirements for my Master of Arts degree, which I received in 2020.

The MRP is entitled The Development of the Poetry Walking Tour of Niagara Falls Using Mobile App Technology, and is available on the Brock University website, my website, on ResearchGate, and Google Scholar. It details some background information on Niagara poetry, the use of mobile apps in tourism, crowdsourcing, print and electronic anthologies, and a detailed explanation of how the Poetry Walking Tour was conceived and executed.

dedicated

Terry wrote on ResearchGate:

Andrew Porteus is the most dedicated scholar of Canada’s Niagara region culture who I know. I strongly recommend this MRP to anyone who is developing projects in public history, multimedia literature, and interactive tours.

I take this as a tremendous compliment from a scholar who encouraged me tremendously (often at local poetry readings in pubs) in the early phases of the development of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project, and encouraged me to go to Brock University and bring some serious scholarly insight to the site.

Thanks very much, Terry.