nanowrimo.)With the bandwidth meltdown of NaNoWriMoProMe and its subsequent demise, I noticed that Zokutou is undergoing a heavy load and is sometimes taking a long time to serve out word meters. I figured that this would happen sooner or later, as we are actually hotlinking to four little GIFs on every single meter (six for the extended wordmeter).
There's an easy way to take some of the load off Zokutou's server, and it will be more sustainable as more people start doing Nanowrimo: just do the following.
- 1. Grab the GIFs. I put a copy of them here on my own site.
- 2. Unzip the GIFs and upload them to your own photo site (MySpace, Photobucket, Flickr, or GJspace) to mirror them. It's the same principle as for icons: hotlinking is a big drain on the servers of the original image owners. http://www.kddresearch.org/TEUNC/Banazir/Writing/Meters/ will have small zip files of whatever I collect, but if you use more than one meter, be aware that there are name conflicts and that you'll have to put them in separate subdirectories.
- 3. Go to Zokutou and generate the code for a word count bar your usual way.
You get something that looks like this:<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='5'> <tr> <td><table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0'> <tr> <td> <img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pel.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pk.gif' width='12' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pc.gif' width='4' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pr.gif' width='88' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/per.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td><div align='center'><b>6,325</b> / 50,000<br>(12.7%)</div></td> </tr> </table>
For an extended word meter, the code looks like this:<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='5'> <tr> <td><table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' align='center'> <tr> <td> <img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pdl.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pd.gif' width='50' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pk.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pc.gif' width='4' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/pr.gif' width='44' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/per.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td><div align='center'><b>6,325</b> / 50,000<br>(50,200 +) (12.7%)</div></td> </tr> </table> - 4. Paste the code into your word processor and replace all "
http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/" with "http://yourURL/pd.gif". That's four replacements for a regular word meter, six for an extended one. Be sure not to replace the links to "http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter", or people will not be able to click on your meter to get to the Zokutou site and generate their own meters.<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='5'> <tr> <td><table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0'> <tr> <td> <img src='http://yourURL/pel.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://yourURL/pk.gif' width='12' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://yourURL/pc.gif' width='4' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://yourURL/pr.gif' width='88' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/per.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td><div align='center'><b>6,325</b> / 50,000<br>(12.7%)</div></td> </tr> </table>
For an extended word meter, the code looks like this:<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='5'> <tr> <td><table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' align='center'> <tr> <td> <img src='http://yourURL/pdl.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://yourURL/pd.gif' width='50' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://yourURL/pk_r.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://yourURL/pc_r.gif' width='4' height='22' border='0'><a href='http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter'><img src='http://yourURL/pr.gif' width='44' height='22' border='0' alt='Zokutou word meter'></a><img src='http://yourURL/per.gif' width='6' height='22' border='0'></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td><div align='center'><b>6,325</b> / 50,000<br>(50,200 +) (12.7%)</div></td> </tr> </table> - 5. Cut the result and paste it into your blog entries or wherever you normally post your word counts. Voila! All of the benefits and a small fraction of the bandwidth load on Zokutou.
Here's what it looks like:6,325 / 50,000
(50,200 +) (12.7%)
(Yes, I realize my word count sucks armadillos through a crazy straw. I was even further behind last year and ended up writing the last 40000 words or so in the last 5 days.)
I hope this helps. Here are a couple of requests:
- 1. Could someone please do the same thing with the Feath.com April Fool's GIFs? I noticed people are starting to use those instead.
- 2. Could someone who knows PHP and has the time to hack out some quick code please post a generator of the Zokutou/April Fool's variety? Then we can mirror that as well, decreasing the load even further, and people won't have to replace URLs by hand.
Be sure to credit Zokutou and link to their meter page if you use their design!
Alternatively, if someone could request the code from Zokutou, we can also mirror it. (I'd do it myself, but if I'm the only one doing it, I'd basically be splitting that bandwidth load of several gigabytes a day with them, so I'd like others to join in before I do.)
Edit, 20:30 CST Thu 10 Nov 2005 - I was missing a few pieces. Thanks to
amishlurker for pointing them out, and please download my archive again if you grabbed it before.Best regards and good luck with all your Nanowrimo efforts,
Banazir
