ridertown.com
July 1, 2003
Introducing... Tracy Miley, Account Representative
St. Marys native Tracy Miley joined the Ridertown staff in June as Account Representative. She has bravely accepted the challenge of bringing order to Ridertown's woefully constipated billing system, and will be contacting our Sponsors on a regular basis. As her job description puts it: "The Account Representative is the human voice and face of Ridertown, the interface between cyberspace Ownership/Staff and brick-and-mortar Sponsors."
Look forward to meeting Tracy to discuss how Ridertown can best serve your business or organization, or contact her directly at tracy@ridertown.com. Tracy (neé Klosterman), a 1992 graduate of Memorial High School, and her husband Jason (MHS '90) are energetic people. In addition to full-time jobs, they operate two part-time businesses and still find time to spend with their young family. Please welcome Tracy and the improved service that she brings, as part of ridertown.com's continual effort to better promote our Sponsors and St. Marys.
The Cluck is Ticking...
The birds are packing on the pounds as we write, in preparation for their annual sacrifice to the gods of St. Marys football at the Chicken Bowl, just around the corner on August 15. They'll be ready for the scrimmage, and Ridertown.com will be ready for the season.
The Spring Street Journal. (Auglaize County's Only Locally-Owned Newspaper) provides the first and best print coverage of Roughrider Football, online with complete write-ups and color game photos by Andrews Photography a couple of hours after each game. In 2002 more than 17,000 visitors came to Ridertown during the Roughrider football season.
Ridertown Sponsors are eligible to multiply their online exposure by signing up for game sponsorships again this year. (Last year's articles are still viewable in the ridertown.com Archives section.) For a measly $10.00 per game, a Sponsor can have a banner link to his Ridertown Storefront Page (or existing web site) placed at the top of The Spring Street Journal. write-up of the game. A banner graphic is also applied to each game photo. If you sign up for all 10 regular-season games for $100 before the season starts, your game sponsorship will be continued through all playoff games at no additional charge!
Don't miss this chance to sponsor Ridertown's coverage of a St. Marys tradition. Deadline to sponsor individual games is July 15 - after that date, only full-season sponsorships will be available. Deadline for full-season sponsorships (including free sponsorship of any playoff games) is August 15 - the Chicken Bowl. Contact tracy@ridertown.com today!
Life Is Good - Hit Me!
Unique Visitors to ridertown.com in June 2003 outnumbered those same month previous year 4652 to 4038 (a 15% increase), extending Ridertown's streak to 34 consecutive months bettering same month previous year numbers.
FYI, "Unique Visitors" is a conservative counting method, recording only one request per remote computer per day. Computer stations that are used by more than one person, such as at businesses, libraries, schools, etc. will still only be counted as one visitor each day. Beware of other website claims for "hits" (requests for all file transfers including individual graphics). For example; over a recent 12-month period (2002-2003) Ridertown received 61,000 "Unique Visitors," but more than 7,500,000 "hits."
Solid Advice for a Better Life:
Are you seeing the big picture? Two-thirds (66%) of Ridertown visitors view the site at a screen resolution of 800 x 600 or below, the industry standard for monitors circa 1990, which is a year that occured in the previous century.
While Ridertown is designed to be viewable at 800 x 600, we recommend using screen resolutions of 1024 x 768 or higher for all visitors who are not legally blind. More information fits on the screen, and the overall internet experience is enhanced as a result. For example, at higher screen resolution settings Ridertown's bottom navigation frame takes up much less of the viewable space.
For Windows 98 (and up) users, the screen resolution can be changed by following this path: Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Screen Area. You can experiment with different settings there, and your computer usually doesn't blow up unless it's a museum piece. Next month I'll tell you how to reduce your screen text size to enable whole words to fit onscreen.
Thanks for visiting ridertown.com!
Chris Botkin
This Issue | June 2003 | May 2003 | April 2003 | March 2003
Have Your Machine Talk To My Machine
ridertown.com is owned and operated by Chris Botkin, a fifth-generation St. Marian born and raised who is active in local service organizations and a heck of a nice feller despite a dearth of perspicacity, pulchritude and luck. Ably assisting is Dave Stilwell who is busy with family and volunteering beyond any reasonable bounds of human endurance. We both have day jobs, too. Our goal for Ridertown is world domination, but we'll settle for dragging St. Marys kicking and screaming into the Information Age. Are you going to come quietly, or do we have to use earplugs?
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