I have had my “bootedman.com” website for almost five years. It began in response to a challenge from my partner who claimed that I didn’t know how many boots I had or whether I liked (certain pairs) any more.

Within a year after creating it, I had indexed all of the boots I owned (at the time) and began working on indexing my leathers.

Then as I learned more about creating web pages and displaying images, linking pages to one another, and also began to attend and photographically document events that men who wore boots attended, the website began to change. It changed from simply being a personal catalog of my own collection to becoming a way to share photo galleries of guys in boots (and leather and uniforms.)

After a couple years elapsed, I began to write some tutorials. Over time, I have learned a thing or two about boots and leather, and wrote some of that information into tutorials that appear both on my website and on the hotboots.com website, which is run by my friend Larry and his husband, Bill. (They’ve been into web stuff far longer than I have, and serve a much larger audience.)

Looking now at where most visitors to my website enter, their internet search engines land them on the following pages, which are listed in rank order of activity:

• Cowboy Boots and Jeans

• How to assemble a CHP uniform

• Guide to Motorcycle Patrol Boots

• Guide to Motorcycle Boots

• Frye Boots – Tutorial and History

• Choosing Boots

• Air Travel with Leather Gear

While a lot of people still visit various pages on my website about boots and leather, many more of them now enter my website for the tutorials and information that I share about various topics.

My email traffic reflects the same, as well. I receive 3 – 5 email messages each week from people who have read something on my website and have asked a follow-up question, or simply have taken the time to write a message to say thanks.

I intend to keep the website going and to maintain it. I also intend to keep it free of cost and advertising, and post information or images on it that I own (that is, not post pictures taken by others that I may see somewhere else on the ‘net.)

I invite suggestions on tutorial topics or updates that I can create when I have time. I probably will delete some really old stuff, like the 2006 – 2008 DC-based HotBoots party photo galleries, which are seldom viewed any more and since those parties are no longer held, there is not much of an interest in those galleries.

I will continue to attend various events at which bike cops compete, take photos, and post galleries of the photos that I take. Those galleries always remain among those most frequently visited.

This blog and my YouTube channel are my only entries into the web 2.0 world, leaving my website to the web 1.0 world. I am happy with it the way it is, and have no major changes in mind for it. Further, I have no interest nor time to expand my involvement into other web 2.0 activities such as I.M., Facebook, or Twitter. I do not really care for those things.

Please feel free to write to me with any website ideas.

Life is short: surf on!

Oh yeah? What kind of “session” am I talking about? Get your mind out of the gutter, boys!

I observed that this computer from China:

124.166.102.219 (Cncgroup Shan1xi Province Network)

…surfed every single page of my Bootedman.com website over a 21-hour period! My goodness gracious!

There were three half-hour breaks during this marathon of website viewing. But I could see the progress, where he (or she) viewed one page, then another, than another for one or two minutes, then quite methodically moved throughout the entire website.

I know that I have posted a lot on my website since I began it about 4-1/2 years ago. But I have never in my life seen anyone spend so much time surfing it.

I have been doing pretty well in reducing my bounce rate. A bounce rate represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site after viewing only one page, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. My bounce rate has changed from over 60% two years ago, to 45% one year ago, to about 28% these days. That’s really pretty good for a lil’ ol’ personal website.

Anyway, I have no idea what Mr. (or Ms.) China wanted to learn about or see, or if this viewing marathon were for purposes other than mere curiosity. For example, the Chinese block some domains for various reasons (such as anything on blogspot, which is completely blocked in China). Or, perhaps someone in China is doing a study on men who wear boots and leather.

Well, for whatever reason, I hope Mr. (or Ms.) China enjoyed him (or her) -self.

Life is short: surf on! Visit here!

I remain in awe that about 30% of the daily visitors to my “bootedman.com” website are from mainland China.

I have heard stories that the Chinese government was requiring computers to have a filter of some sort on their browsers, but delayed implementing that rule. Meanwhile, literally dozens of visitors to my website from China are viewing hundreds and hundreds of pages. They seem to visit everything, from motorcycle boots to cowboy boots to cop galleries.

Simply amazing… the floodgates of China visit my lil’ ol’ website so often and look at so much. I figure that they are interested in American culture, are fascinated with what the web can bring to them, and perhaps more than a few have an “interest” (wink) in leather and boots. Perhaps some are trying to figure out what styles of boots that they make over there will sell better over here in the U.S.

Too bad the Chinese have blocked visiting this blog — or for that matter, any U.S. blog. I read about how blogs are blocked in China, and feel badly about that. Perhaps that’s why I get so many visitors to my website instead. An interesting side note, blog visitors from Hong Kong are not blocked, even though Hong Kong has been a part of China for over a decade. Perhaps the PRC’s net nannies do not extend their influence to the former British Colony.

I have stopped trying to over-analyze why about a third of my websites daily visitors are from China. I just observe that when they visit, they don’t just pop in, read a page or two, and move on. No, they view hundreds of pages (I have about 350 pages on my website now), and continue to return over and over again.

Well, fellas, enjoy!

A fellow Bootman who has his own Yahoo Group lamented recently about sending out photos showing his work in boot photography, but was concerned that he hardly ever received any comments, thank-yous, or “attaboys.”

I have seen the trend of this type of thing occurring on boards like “Boots on Line” and Jared’s “Abootfetish” Yahoo group.

After I took the time to compose, crop, and edit lots of photos and posted them in various places, I was disappointed that I hardly received any replies or comments or email. I once thought, “nobody pays attention, nobody cares.”

Well, that’s not true. Lots of people pay attention–I have proof! I have software that works on every page of my website and blog that shows me what pages are being viewed, and where people come from. When I post a message with a link to my website or blog, I see upwards of over 2,000 visitors within 24 hours after posting the link. That’s pretty amazing, considering how narrow the field of interest there is about boots.

On top of that, about 80% of the daily visitors to my website and blog come from Google and other search engines. Last week, I was reaching new heights (in absolute numbers) of the number of unique visitors to my website. (All due to the Law Ride 2009 photo galleries.)

There are a few people, such as my local Silver Spring, DC, and NoVa Bootman lurkers, who have bookmarked my blog and/or website home page, and visit every day. But few people bookmark web pages any more. Most visitors “surf in” and “surf out.”

My stats indicate that about half of the visitors to my blog and website are on for less than 5 seconds. That indicates to me that they stumbled upon it while surfing the ‘net, and didn’t stay. Ooooh… heaven forbid! Aaak! he’s gay! Run for the … [next website].

The next most common visit length for my website or blog is from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. There are some visitors who stay longer, but most have very short visits.

I have learned a number of things from observing how visitors visit:

• Most visitors come from search engines.

• Those who come from links usually drop in and leave quickly. This is an indication of true “surfing” behavior.
• There remains strong interest in certain things that I blog about: Muir Caps, wearing leather in public, and motor cops, but not some other things. Oh well, it’s my blog; I’ll blog about what I like.
• There are a lot more people looking at what you post on the Internet than you think. Most don’t say anything because they either don’t know how — or, more likely, they are doing what they do on the ‘net: they are surfing.

• Most visitors have the attention span of a gnat.

I am not saying that most visitors have the brain capacity of a gnat. I am saying that they surf along at a rapid rate and are scanning, rather than reading.

Us older guys who were taught to read by Mrs. Snaggletooth in first grade have trouble understanding that the kids in their 20s now (born in the late 1980s) did not learn how to read like we were taught back in the early ’60s. They were taught to read using a process of sight scanning for key words and page elements. We were taught to read word-for-word, where they were taught to read “for meaning” (however interpreted through sight scanning.)

Further, much pedagogical research indicates that the vast majority of humans “read” images much more than they read words. Why are the world’s printed newspapers dying? Kids don’t read. They scan, and they scan using the tool that they grew up with (and us older guys didn’t): the world wide web on the Internet.

It’s time for us older guys to have a change of heart about how we view the world as it is engaged by younger people. They have an attention span of a gnat, but they do not lack intelligence. They just apply it differently.

… Something to think about… and it’s only the older guys who have gotten this far on this blog post. The younger dudes surfed away hours ago, and probably have twittered at least 20 tweets since then.

I uploaded new photos on my website over the last weekend. These photos were of the assembly of a full leather suit.

Whenever I create a new web page or upload photos, I run a scan of the full site to make sure that I didn’t accidentally write errant code which would result in an image or page not displaying properly. The software I use to scan the site also counts all of the images that are on it.

This week, the number of photos on my website broke the 5,000 mark. Not bad for a personal site!

What are the most visited pages and viewed photos on my website? Not hard to guess if you think about it: galleries of motor officers. Interestingly, the next most-visited pages are my tutorials — how to wear cowboy boots, then the detailed Guides on motorcycle police patrol boots, motorcycle boots (in general) and my Complete Guide to Fetish Leather Gear. I remain amazed at just how many people visit my website and go to certain pages directly by using search engines, primarily Google. That search engine drives 80% of my site’s visitors to it each day, on average.

I am observing that what was once a way to organize and virtually display my boot collection and leather gear has evolved, morphed, or changed over the last year, in particular, as I have added my own version of tutorials, galleries, and displays that lots of people look for, and have commented from time to time that they think is helpful advice from a guy who has been around the block once or twice. I see myself changing my website into more of an “information/reference service” than a “see my boots” display as it began. I continue to learn, and appreciate your feedback.

Life is short: enjoy your visit!

After my conference ended yesterday afternoon, I met a guy who is visiting DC from California for dinner. This is the best time of year to visit DC, before Spring break. Come mid-March and especially around the beginning of April when the cherry trees are in bloom, all hell breaks loose. It is crowded in all the museums and other tourist venues until the end of August.

My visitor wrote to me after seeing my website. He is a young guy who is interested in leather and had some questions. He said that he has visited a number of websites that some other gay guys have posted, either on their own or on geocities. He remarked that many of these sites had not been updated, sometimes for years. He complimented me that I kept attending to my website. He also talked about how he noticed that most gay men’s websites delve into fantasy and you really can’t tell much about the guy, other than perhaps about his ego. It’s very hard to tell if any of the content on some gay guy’s websites is truthful. I have noticed that, too.

My visiting dinner companion paid me the biggest compliment: “when I saw your website and read all the content on it about your passions and interests, I could tell that you are ‘the real deal,’ and I wanted to write to you.” That he did. We exchanged some messages, then met for a nice, relaxing dinner at a restaurant with outdoor tables. It was such a pleasant evening.

I really enjoyed having dinner with J, and discussing a lot of things. I hope he has a good time being a tourist in DC. I appreciate his review and comments about me and my website. It’s true: WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). And due to the very nice weather yesterday, I was able to ride my Harley to show him that side of me too: boots, leather, and the bike. Couldn’t have been a nicer evening.