If you use SiteMeter.com to keep track of your visitors and readers, this post may be important to you.

I’ve often noticed that my blogs and sites tend to be sluggish when loading in the browser. Trying to identify the source of the slowness, I’d usually look at the bottom of my browser where the various links are shown from where the site or blog tries to fetch stuff (e.g., internal servers, images, YouTube, etc.).

One link that would always pop up there was “dg.specificclick.net”.

I use Firefox as my main browser, but today I checked my sites in Internet Explorer, and what did I find? That “dg” link would start loading all of sudden, about ten or fifteen seconds after the site had loaded, and then suddenly redirect my site to the browser’s default search engine looking for “dg.specificclick.net”.

Now, the experience may differ depending on your IE browser settings, but as far as I know, my IE is set to all the default parameters (since I don’t normally use it, I haven’t had any need to “tinker” with its settings).

While in Firefox, the “dg” thingy merely causes a delay in the full loading of my site, in IE, it causes the browser to redirect to a search engine – about 15-20 seconds into the site loading. This means that readers using IE, and with settings similar or identical to mine, won’t be able to read the site because they’re taken away to a search engine instead. All this is prompted by that silly “dg.specificclick.net” thingy.

Well, but the fact that in IE I was taken to a search engine running a search on that particular link led me to some interesting info about the “dg” thingy.

As it turns out, it’s a cookie that is supposed to track a user’s browsing history. So, my IE settings apparently considered it a privacy problem and therefore triggered the redirect.

Now, why would there be such a cookie on my sites and blogs? I certainly didn’t put it there on purpose, because I’m really not interested in my readers’ browsing habits. No.

But the cookie, as I learned, is embedded in the code that you place on your site when you install SiteMeter.com.

So, I’ve done the only reasonable thing one can do in a situation like that: I’ve removed the SiteMeter.com code from all my sites and blogs.

In Firefox, the dg cookie caused my sites to load more slowly. In IE, it certainly prompted a redirect away from my sites, and other sites using SiteMeter as well by the way – i.e., if I were to read all my usual blogs in IE, I wouldn’t be able to read those with SiteMeter at all, because IE would redirect me away from them after about 10-20 seconds. Since I never use IE, I’ve never known about this issue until today.

Now that SiteMeter has been removed from all my sites, I’ve noticed that they all load much faster now, and in IE there’s no more redirect away from my sites (or any site that has SiteMeter installed).

Apart from that, I wouldn’t feel good about myself if I exposed my readers to a pernicious cookie like that – after all, IE considers it enough of a “threat” to redirect to another site.

My advice is this: if you use SiteMeter, remove it. Use another free counter, if you need a counter at all, such as StatCounter.com, for example. At least, I’m not aware of any issues with StatCounter. Or if you use WordPress or Typepad, use the service’s own built-in stats feature.

After all, who knows what other sort of rubbish SiteMeter puts into your site together with its code?

So, get rid of it. NOW!

Besides, maybe you’ll all be better off without a counter. Bloggers tend to become too obsessed with these useless stats anyway.

I’ve written about this before. Unfortunately, Robert Jago continues to lie to and con his readers.

You see, his blog was never very popular (bad spelling, uninteresting posts, etc.), so he came up with a shtick: publish a monthly ranking of the best 25 political blogs in Canada.

The only trouble is that his ranking is a fairy-tale story, because his ranking is void of any objectivity whatsoever.

But he continues to tell his monthly lies, all in the attempt to drive traffic to his site like a cheap blogging whore – or is that a blhore?

I’ve explained the problems with his “ranking” in detail and provided two examples of objective blog rankings (here and here).

People like Robert Jago, who use dishonesty and lies to publicize their blogs, give all bloggers a bad name. It’s particularly shameful, because political bloggers should strive for more credibility, but Jago’s credibility is a big fat zero.

Folks, if you go to www.WernerPatels.com (or www.WernerPatels.ca) and www.Conservative-Digest.com, you’ll see that I have reduced the width of the main column. Why? Because the number of readers who access my sites from mobile devices (smartphones, iPhone, etc.) is growing steadily, and I was told recently that the wide format I used to have in place would make it quite difficult for mobile readers, as it would require a lot of sideways scrolling and things like that.

So, I’ve tried to find some kind of middle ground – not too wide, but not too narrow either.

I hope the format works for everyone. Feedback is welcome and greatly appreciated.

Just finished watching Mamma Mia! on Movie Central. Clearly, the storyline didn’t matter at all. It was all about stringing ABBA’s greatest hits together into one movie.

Meryl Streep surprised me, especially when she sang The Winner Takes It All.

But here’s my advice to Pierce: don’t quit your day job to launch a singing career.

As you know, I’ve been doing some “summer cleaning” of my web presence, but now, I think, I’m finally done rearranging everything.

Here’s what you must bookmark or add to your favourites if you want to follow my musings – and who doesn’t, right?

My Web Column:
www.WernerPatels.com (also at www.WernerPatels.ca)

My Blog:
www.conservative-digest.com

Note: www.WernerPatels.net now redirects readers to my Conservative Digest blog.

Finally! It’s done! I’ve finished cleaning up my site (www.WernerPatels.com), leaving only my web columns (at least 600-800 words) and some of the blog posts that have become big hits with readers as well as Google search favourites.

From now on, though, only my web columns will be posted to www.WernerPatels.com.

For daily blog musings, visit www.Conservative-Digest.com. 

Folks, some fairly big changes coming your way – if you’re one of the many, many, many readers and faithful followers of my blog and web column.

1. I have launched a new site called The Conservative Digest. As the name suggests, this is a partisan ( = in favour of common sense and conservatism) blog. The site also welcomes guest submissions, as I don’t want to be the only one posting there all the time. Please add this site to your bookmarks, favourites and blogrolls.
2. www.WernerPatels.com is now the primary home of my Web Column. For this purposes, I have begun deleting and weeding out old “blog posts”, leaving only my Web Columns (i.e., those at least 600-800 words in length). I have already weeded out most of the 2008 blog posts. From now on, you will only find my (longish) Web Columns on that site.

In short, if you use these two sites, you’ll have the complete “Werner package”, and that’s really all you need, n’est-ce pas?

I’ve made some more changes to my online presence.

As of today, I have a new blog site Conservative Digest. I also invite readers to make guest submissions for posts and articles to be published on the new site, which is fully and unabashedly committed to conservative principles and values.

I have yet to decide what to do about my wernerpatels.com and wernerpatels.ca sites.

I’m thinking of merging both into one and use that merged site only for my web columns (at least 600-800 words in length). Still torn about this. Don’t know yet what to do. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, enjoy the new Conservative Digest site.

I am pleased to report that my book is finally coming along – after much procrastination. In all fairness, though, I can’t shoulder the entire blame for that: I’ve been extremely busy with work for the last year. Whenever I was ready to sit down and write another few pages, or an entire chapter, my clients would come along and dump tons and tons of work on my desk.

As you know, I am writing a book about Canadian politics. I’m currently working on the chapter on political blogging in Canada (the “Canadian political blogosphere”).

I really want to finish the entire book by the end of this year!

Effective immediately, my Web Columns will be published at www.WernerPatels.ca first and archived at www.WernerPatels.net.

They will no longer be published at www.WernerPatels.com, which now serves as my “blog” for observations on current affairs that don’t require a 600-800-word opinion column.

So if you have my dot-com site bookmarked, please add my dot-ca as well.

Also note: www.WernerPatels.ca is no longer hosted on the Blogger platform. Instead, it has been moved to the www.Typepad.com service.