Blog Update, My Amazement, and My Gratitude

First of all, a few features that have been added:

• A "New Comments" widget in the sidebar... now you can see the first few lines of the five most recent comments no matter which post the comments are posted on.
• More pictures added to the picture page

Second, your traffic generated $218 yesterday ($1242 since we started this). Coupled with the extremely generous donations, I haven't stressed over money the way I might have without this resource and your generosity.

Third, you would not believe the cool stuff you can do with Google Analytics when you're stuck in a waiting room just itching to do something to get your mind off of everything that is going on. I added the Google Analytics html to Jenni's blog Sunday night and yesterday I found these facts that you might find interesting. I certainly did. On Monday...

• the site received 1,235 visits.
• each visitor stayed an average of 4 minutes and 16 seconds and visited 2.97 pages before moving on.
• most of the people who followed a link to the site, followed it through www.facebook.com.
• the site received visitors from 30 states (84% from NC but quite a few from Georgia, New York, Texas, South Carolina, California, and Florida as well... no more than 6 from any other state)
• the site received visitors from Spain, Finland, Brazil, Switzerland, Latvia, and Canada

I am amazed at the outpouring of love and support from all over the United States and all around the world... and it is probably more widespread than this post suggests because I didn't insert the html code until March 15th. All of these stats came from just one day...the blog ran from March 9th to March 15th without any tracking.

To everyone who has spread the word about Jenni, you have my thanks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How does Adsense work?

A. Adsense is an advertising service run by Google. Companies pay Google to post their links all over the place. In turn, Google pays the people whose websites show those ads each time a large number of people see the ad and each time someone clicks on an ad. If you add Adsense to your website, you will earn a little just for page views and a larger amount for each person who actually clicks on an advertisement link.

Q. I see that there is a number of comments at the bottom of each post, but how do I see them and/or post my own?
A. There are two ways to get to the comment form. One is to click on the link for the number of comments. The other is to click on the title of the post itself. Either way, you should see what others have written and there should be a blank form at the bottom of the post that you just fill out and click on "Post Comment."

Q. Why do I have to have a Google account to post comments?
A. You don't anymore. I realized this and fixed it. Now anyone can post.

Q. I signed up and I'm not getting email updates? Why not?
A. First of all, the email updates only happen once per day. I'm working on a solution to this problem but I don't have one yet. Second, you have to confirm your subscription. If you haven't yet, it won't send you anything. If you didn't get a confirmation email, make sure you check your spam folder in your email account. By the way, if you know how to make Feedburner send email updates more often or if you know of a service better than Feedburner, please let me know.

Q. I have updates, but I don't see pictures and sometimes it looks like you didn't finish writing!
A. The email updates only show the title and the first part of the post (I'm guessing 200-300 characters but I'm not sure). If the update was longer than that or included pictures, you'll have to click the title to see the whole post. The email updates also don't include any of the hyperlinks, so if I linked the word pneumothorax to a page that explains the term, you won't see it on the email update.

Q. What happened to the posts at the bottom of the page?
A. After a certain number of posts are reached, the older ones rotate off. You can still find them by clicking on "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page. Also, I have added a linkbar at the top of the page that links to stuff that I think should stay on the front page of the site.

Q. What can I do to help?
A. Keep praying and keep coming back to the website / hospital to check on Jenni. Forward the web address to folks to whom we haven't sent it. Post messages for Jenni. She's been reading them and they make her smile (which I like to see).

Q. You didn't answer my question!
A. Just post a comment on this page and I'll try to get to it as soon as I can.

Early Wednesday Morning

I don't have an update on Jenni right now (and probably won't until lunchtime because of visiting hours in the ICU), but I wanted to give a quick update on the finances. I just read an email from Tracy Sigmon that really took a load off of my shoulders. Apparently, I can apply for shared sick leave. I was under the impression that I couldn't and was going to apply for Family Medical Leave (which is unpaid), live off of savings, and try to make money online somehow (starting with Google Adsense on this site).

I just wanted to thank everyone who visited the site yesterday. I've found myself coming back continuously just to reread the info on her conditions and medications. When there are so many it can be difficult to remember, especially when so many of them are acronyms or nearly impossible to pronounce. All of your traffic produced $16 in earnings and I greatly appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers. I'm going to get ready so I can head to the hospital, and when the first round of visitation hours end I'll post another update.