There are many posts about tracking multiple sub-domains in one profile in Google Analytics; this is a step-by-step guide to implementing it.

Some decisions need to be made early in the implementation process. First, you need to ask yourself how detailed and segmented you want your sub-domains. If the site-overlay functionality is something you can’t live without, I don’t suggest following these steps.

Google Analytics treats every domain, be it a sub-domain or a different URL as unique. This can cause problems when you want to track traffic for multiple domains or sub-domains in one easy access report. To overcome this obstacle we add a line of code to the tracking script. Google’s tutorial can be found here.

The problem with Google’s tutorial is that it doesn’t tell you Field B isn’t required. This tutorial adds a ‘/’ unnecessarily to your data. It may prove to be beneficial for you but I prefer my content reports displaying www.viget.com as opposed to /www.viget.com

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South by Southwest Interactive Festival, the largest conference in our industry by population and hype, unofficially kicked off this week with the unveiling of this year’s Panel Picker. Those that have been involved in SXSW, or “South By” before know that the conference is four and a half days chock-full of panels, most of which have been elected into the conference by the community. Though the conference itself doesn’t begin until March, the scramble for panel positions has now begun.

Consequently, the last few days have been characterized by blog posts both asking for your votes as well as discouraging your votes. Predictably, Twitter has been full of folks peddling their panel submissions too.

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Cameron Moll’s Authentic Boredom and CSS Mastery are standard reads here at the Lab. If you’re not yet aware, Cameron has a new book coming out in one week entitled Mobile Web Design, which we’re sure will be worth picking up.

Cameron says about it …

This is the book that … contains more than 40 full-color screens from several mobile devices (including iPhone).

This is the book that includes what I feel is only the most important and relevant information — roughly one-third the length of most tech books — but, I believe every bit as thorough and helpful as lengthier volumes.

It’s available for immediate download in PDF format on the 28th, and there are some fun giveaways for getting it early.

Cameron’s post
The official site with sneak peek

Earlier this week, I was lucky enough to spend the day engaged in thought-provoking discussions with our industry leaders at Adaptive Path’s annual UX Week 2007. Although I was only able to attend for a single day, there was more informative and thought provoking discussions to keep my brain churning for the rest of the week.

While the topics varied from usability and prototyping techniques to agile process and accessibility, the theme was clear: we can join in finding solutions to the challenges we confront in the evolving web industry. Last weekend at BarCampDC, I spoke about some of the obstacles visual designers face. At UX Week, that sentiment was reinforced as we talked about the rise of technologies like JavaScript, AJAX, and RIA —and their impacts on usability, interfaces and documentation. I quickly realized that these challenges are felt across all disciplines (information architects, experience designers, visual designers, and developers) of our field. Throughout the day, we discussed how to adapt to these trends so we can be better user experience designers and, in the end, simply create better products.

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In the past six months since I started working as a project manager with Viget Labs, I’ve found about 932 reasons why working here is so radical. Here are three:

1. Brilliant colleagues. Being surrounded by talented people who can handle pressure gracefully while regularly surpassing expectations is priceless. It makes for an upbeat, supportive, intensely collaborative, creative environment. Before Viget, I was restless and thoroughly disillusioned. So, I was foaming at the mouth during my interview with the Lab. Luckily, they hired me anyway. I still drool over my own job.
2. Inherent mentoring program. Founders — and superfly brothers — Brian and Andy created an almost familial atmosphere (Andy’s camera is seemingly a fixture around his neck) that cultivates learning. The open-door policy is taken seriously. I’m taught by the very best designers, developers, and marketing strategists. We share information internally on a wiki and blog and publicly on 4Labs, Twitter, and Facebook. It all goes to making me a better PM. I love that. My clients do, too.
3. Respect. Integrity and respect here are paramount. The uncompromising quality of our work is complemented by unique staff rewards like catered lunches on Fridays (which double as our staff meetings); an annual dinner that isn’t boring; and team building activities every few months like go-karting. Oh, and the full health insurance doesn’t hurt, either.

All that constant learning and self improvement in the past seven years helps us to be industry innovators, and it’s provided our clients with successful solutions that keep ‘em coming back for more.

Until I got here, I thought “generous benefits” was a bloated phrase companies used instead of the less appealing, but more realistic, “Hey! It’s a paycheck!” Now, I actually *feel* like a valued individual who’s part of a larger, dynamic team. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of something that extraordinary?

With ExecutiveBiz, we’re helping to organize the 2nd annual New New Internet: Web 2.0 for Business conference. This year it will be held in Reston, VA on November 1st. Confirmed speakers include James Surowiecki (author of The Wisdom of Crowds), Ted Leonsis, Om Malik, and Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Work Week) as well as DC’s own Rohit Bhargava (Ogilvy), Frank Gruber (AOL), and Geoff Livingston. 

We’ll also have a few guys I’ve blogged about, including Gary Vaynerchuk of wine library tv (see post), Brad Feld of Foundry, one of the organizers of TechStars and Startup Weekend, and Ryan Carson, who runs the Future of Web Apps and Future of Web Design conferences among other ventures.  More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Last year’s event was solid with more than 450 in attendance, and this year could see almost double that.  In fact, a sell-out is possible so grab a ticket early.  Use the promo code “viget” to save on the registration.

There are still spots for sponsors, established companies to exhibit, or start-ups to showoff in the web 2.0 application competition.  

Stay tuned to www.tnni07.com for more announcements about speakers and related unconference events.  We (Viget) are also looking for co-sponsors for the traditional (as much as 2 years can be a tradition) pre-conference happy hour, so let me know if you’re interested.

Patrick, Clinton, and I spent Friday and Saturday with 100+ other Ruby developers at the Ruby Hoedown here in North Carolina, and we had a great time. The sessions ranged from conceptual (Ken Auer talked about “Crossing the Chasm,” pulling examples from the history of Smalltalk) to highly technical (Jared Richardson showed just how easy it is to turbocharge your Ruby by dropping down into C), and, as so often happens, meeting the other attendees was tremendously valuable in and of itself.

I think the sessions we got the most out of were the opening workshop on testing (which raised over $3,000 for charity), the lightning talks on the second day (where nearly a dozen attendees, including Clinton and Patrick, spent 5 minutes each presenting things they’ve been working on), and Marcel Molina’s closing keynote on code beauty (which was easily the most thought-provoking event of the conference), but all of the sessions had something to offer.

One other thing of note came out of the Hoedown - lunch on the second day provided the opportunity for people interested in individual topics to come together in Birds of a Feather sessions. One of these BoF sessions (on using Ruby to enact social change) has resulted in the creation of a new rubyforchange project on Rubyforge. This project, with its accompanying mailing list, will serve as a focus for Ruby developers who want to use their skills to benefit others. It’s heartening to see that the community is continuing to make a concerted effort to give back.

Finally, I’d like to say that Nathaniel and Jeremy did a fantastic job putting this on, and we can’t wait ’til next year!

I’m here at BarCamp DC enjoying the first session on Voicemail to Twitter. The Viget team is well represented and we’re expecting a great day.

I’ll try to update this post throughout day when I can, and Brian will be helping out as well. You can also keep an eye on the Twitter feed to see what sessions are happening.

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There continues to be a common misconception among some clients and designers that we must get anything “important” that we want our users to see above the fold.

For those who may not know what “the fold” is, it is basically the part of a web page you can see before having to scroll. The fold varies from user to user based on a number of variables – primarily screen resolution and the combined height of the menus and toolbars at the top of your browser window. While on a friend’s computer not long ago, I opened up her browser and there were nearly four inches worth of menus/toolbars at the top of her window. It was amazing the loss of screen real estate and, in this case, great attention to the fold wouldn’t have mattered. To the point …

Milissa Tarquini’s post at Boxes and Arrows goes to great length to debunk the myth of the fold and builds off her very real experience and some very factual user data. It doesn’t throw concern for the fold entirely out the window, but brings us down to earth and puts the importance of the fold in proper contemporary perspective.

Some of the points that I found quite interesting are:

The technical considerations of designing for the web can (and do) change quite regularly; but, the human variables change at a slower rate. Sometimes, the human variables change at such a slow rate that we have a hard time believing that it happens. This is happening right now in web design. There is an astonishing amount of disbelief that the users of web pages have learned to scroll and that they do so regularly. Holding on to this disbelief – this myth that users won’t scroll to see anything below the fold – is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users …

Screen performance data and new research indicate that users will scroll to find information and items below the fold. There are established design best practices to ensure that users recognize when a fold exists and that content extends below it …

Jakob Nielsen wrote about the growing acceptance and understanding of scrolling in 1997, yet 10 years later we are still hearing that users don’t scroll …

Research debunking this myth is starting to pop up, and a great example of this is the report available on ClickTale.com …

The most basic rule of thumb (in considering the fold today) is that for every site the user should be able to understand what your site is about by the information presented to them above the fold. If they have to scroll to even discover what the site is, its success is unlikely …

Stop worrying about the fold. Don’t throw your best practices out the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You’re not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough, your users will read it to the end …

The biggest lesson to be learned here is that if you use visual cues (such as cut-off images and text) and compelling content, users will scroll to see all of it …

Other relevant articles that Milissa cites:
Jared Spool’s Utilizing the Cut-off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll
Jakob Nielsen’s Changes in Web Usability Since 1994
ClickTale’s Unfolding the Fold

So, in general, as we continue to overcome the fear of the fold, it appears that our attentions can best be focused toward creating both engaging designs and compelling content that encourage users to explore the page and the site, and that opening our designs up a bit to create some “visual breathing room” might be the alternative medicine that our users need.

Know the trends, but also know when they bend or when they end – the web and users are constantly evolving, and so should our approaches.

Today our friends at Pickle.com announced that they will be joining Scripps Networks (coverage at TechCrunch and paidContent.org). Scripps runs cable channels like HGTV and Food Network, and their online counterparts are some of the most visited lifestyle sites on the Web. They are doing a number of acquisitions and Deanna Brown, AOL and Yahoo veteran and relatively new president of Scripps Networks Interactive Group, seems to have a clear vision for what she’s building.

“It’s becoming clear that consumers have an appetite for both the professional guidance they have come to rely on from our branded Web sites as well as the insights and sensibilities they can get from the user-generated experience,” said Deanna Brown, president of Scripps Networks Interactive Group. “User-generated content is the perfect complement to the authoritative resources currently provided by our brands and will allow us to broaden and deepen our relationship with audiences through open, two-way conversations centered around content, community and commerce opportunities in the food, home and living categories.”

We’ve worked with Pickle for about 18 months, helping with everything from user experience design to marketing strategies to their systems infrastructure. There’s more history — in the pre-Viget late 90’s I worked with John and Leo at their web consulting firm Clara Vista. I’ve enjoyed having a chance to work with them again on this venture.

Andy and I had dinner with John and Leo tonight to congratulate them on the deal. Though we were along for much of the ride, we had a chance to recap first-hand the venture from conception to today, and reflect a bit on how it all went. Some of their lessons learned are off-the-record, but one thing they emphasized was clear: speed matters. From software development to raising funds to streamlining due diligence, when they were able to move quickly good things happened for everyone, and when there were delays they were particularly painful.

They’ve worked extremely hard over the past couple of years to make Pickle successful and seem genuinely excited about their potential to have a positive impact at Scripps. Congratulations to everyone involved.