The last thing I expect to see when I come to HN is a post about the site I work on every day (well... one of the sites). I would love to have some sort of semi-technical blog on our sites to showcase what actually happens behind the scenes more often.<p>From the thousands of lines of code per month to the multiple tiers of network redundancy to the hours upon hours we spend optimizing page performance for a better user experience, I would love to show some of it off to a technical audience.
Rob's been a hero of mine for a long time, but I think what sets him apart is his eagerness to test, analyze, and iterate on news and media concepts, something sadly lacking throughout much of the industry but a familiar formula around here.<p>His play-by-play through a day at the Vegas Sun is a great example.
We drastically changed the homepage of our weekly newspaper site (<a href="http://uweekly.com" rel="nofollow">http://uweekly.com</a>) and shifted it to a stream that combines, stories, comments and site activity. The past 2 months has seen a increase in uniques, but also a sharp dropoff in return visitors. We've had a tough time finding the right balance between fresh content and the stories from the paper. These are some great insights from Rob that will help us tweak this formula.
alexa and compete both say the lasvegassun numbers are headed downward. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that those services can't do much better than provide order of magnitude comparisons between sites.