Third Birthday for SDUGS

This report includes the statistics for the first three years of our website (i.e. 24/4/2015 – 24/4/2018). It includes the following publications:

·        Endodontic Diagnosis (Published on April 24, 2015)

·        Student Manual of Clinical Periodontics (Published on April 28, 2015)

·        Infection Control for Dental Students (Published on May 4, 2015)

·        Removable Partial Denture Design Guide (Published on December 5, 2015)

·        Simplified Dental Photography (Published on December 18, 2016)

·        Simplified Dental Photography: YouTube Photo Editing Tutorials (Published on December 19, 2016)

·        Yazan’s Dental Chart (Published on February 4, 2017)

·        Yazan’s Periodontal Chart (Published on February 4, 2017)

Google Analytics Worldwide Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 24/4/2018)

Google Analytics Saudi Arabia Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 24/4/2018)

Google Analytics Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 24/4/2018)

153 Followers

139 Followers

3 Playlists – 30 videos – 20 Subscribers – 344 Views

Annual Statistical Report (2015-2016)

  This report includes the statistics from the launch of the website until the end of 2016 (i.e. 24/4/2015 – 31/12/2016). This phase includes the following publications:

• Endodontic Diagnosis (Published on April 24, 2015)
• Student Manual of Clinical Periodontics (Published on April 28, 2015)
• Infection Control for Dental Students (Published on May 4, 2015)
• Removable Partial Denture Design Guide (Published on December 5, 2015)
• Simplified Dental Photography (Published on December 18, 2016)
• Simplified Dental Photography: YouTube Photo Editing Tutorials (Published on December 19, 2016)

Google Analytics Worldwide Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 31/12/2016)

Google Analytics Saudi Arabia Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 31/12/2016)

Google Analytics Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 31/12/2016)

Author: Yazan Aljohani    Designer: Noha Alkurdi

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SDUGS with a Different S

          The word “Society” is defined as “an organization or club formed for a particular purpose or activity.” By this definition we are a society since we are an organization with a purpose; however, describing our projects as such had led to many asking us “Are you a registered society?” and the answer is “No, we are not a registered society nor do we plan to be in the near future”.

          We like to be simple and direct just like our website and learning resources. Our aim, as mentioned in our about page, is “to help dental scholars, especially Saudi dental undergrads, in improving themselves in matters related to their dental education and endeavors” and for us that’s what’s important.

          With that being said, we decided to change our name from Saudi Dental Undergrads Society to Saudi Dental Undergrads Site. Hopefully, this clears up the confusion so that we can focus more on our aim.

Author: Yazan Aljohani

Statistical Obstacles Part II: No Specific Statistics for Each Publication!

          We first realized the issue when Khalid Alfiafi, a board member of SDUGS and the first published author on our site, asked me about the statistics for his publication and I told him “4 views but I don’t understand why?”.

          That was impossible because many have had told Khalid that they downloaded and studied it for their clinical and theoretical exams.

          The Index page, which contains all the publications, received a great amount of views yet the publications themselves didn’t. As if people just viewed what we have published but never downloaded them.

          Basically all learning resources are put together in an Index page and each of them is in a separate subpage. Whenever someone clicks on any learning resource; instead of going to the subpage, the content of the subpage is pulled into the Index thus google analytics is not triggered for subpages which means we don’t get statistics for each learning resource.

          Luckily we found a solution that didn’t involve changing the design. A freelance user experience consultant shares on his blog the solution. It was a code he made that we injected (just a fancy way to say “copy paste”) into the settings of our Squarespace advanced settings.

          Currently our Google Analytics settings are set and with no issues (Hopefully it remains so); however, we don’t know how many views each of our first three publications received in the period from 24/4/2015 – 25/7/2015. We only know how many views they all received collectively.

Author: Yazan Aljohani

Statistical Obstacles Part I: Spam!

          During the initial days of launching the website I logged into our Google Analytics account and I got really happy to see visits from China. The day after that, I saw many visits from Russia. My reaction was: “Okay ... this looks fishy”. Apparently we were getting spammed.

          Accurate statistics are crucial to us and having spammed statistics made me question the effectiveness of our approach.

          I read many explanations and finally understood what’s wrong. I did some optimization to our Google Analytics account but we were still getting spammed.

          Being too busy to try again; I decided to postpone fixing the statistics until after graduation. Once I got the time to do so, I searched for a solution and I found a great article in which the author shares comprehensive and well explained steps to solve all the statistical issues we were facing. He also offers his services to do it all for a reasonable price.

          That was, probably, the fifth attempt to fix the statistics. I was overwhelmed enough to take the shortcut of hiring someone to do it; however, I decided to try one last time before hiring someone to do it.

          It worked like a charm, without hiring someone to do it, and we were so happy that we can finally get accurate statistics. Little did we know, the second statistical obstacle (the topic of the next blog) was even more difficult to solve.

          Here is a quick look at an overview of our statistics with and without spam:

Spam & actual worldwide sessions for the duration (24/4/2015 – 12/8/2015)

Actual worldwide sessions for the duration (24/4/2015 – 12/8/2015)

Orange: Sessions with spam. Blue: sessions without spam.

From August 8 spam was blocked (all sessions = optimized sessions)

Author: Yazan Aljohani

Saudi Dental Undergrads Society Statistical Report: Phase I

          The first phase extends from the website launch up to 2 days before posting the 1st blog (i.e. 24/4/2015 – 12/8/2015). This phase includes the following publications:

• Endodontic Diagnosis (Published on April 24, 2015)
• Student Manual of Clinical Periodontics (Published on April 28, 2015)
• Infection Control for Dental Students (Published on May 4, 2015)

Google Analytics Worldwide Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 12/8/2015)

Google Analytics Saudi Arabia Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 12/8/2015)

Google Analytics Overview Report for the Duration (24/4/2015 – 12/8/2015)

Official Twitter Account (@SDUGSorg)

Author: Yazan Aljohani    Designer: Noha Alkurdi

The Website

          As an organization, the website is the backbone of our project. It is the platform on which learning resources are shared. Putting it simply “No website no SDUGS”.

          It had to be simple & easily navigated, without disturbing organization, thus we established the “Three clicks rule” which implies: “Any content can be reached in three mouse clicks from the homepage”. For example:

• *1st click*: Learning Resources
• *2nd click*: Endodontic Diagnosis
• *3rd click*: Click to Download

          The design evolves around learning resources by facilitating finding the needed and not distracting the viewer with advertisement or unrelated information.

          We don’t want to bombard our audience with information they consider insignificant and that’s how we built it and how we built our content notification approach via our official twitter account (@SDUGSorg) on which we only tweet about published learning resources.

          As for the blog, it targets those who are interested in the journey of Saudi Dental Undergrads Society. It has its own twitter account (@sdugs_blog) so that people are not forced to receive notifications for blogs from the official twitter account when they only care about new published learning resources.

          At first we paid a free-lance local website designer to build the website; however, before launching the site we switched to the website builder “Squarespace”. We paid 300% more than what we should have if we would have chosen Squarespace from the beginning (our first mistake) but it was the best decision we made.

          We need statistics for the site itself and for the published learning resources. Squarespace offers statistics but we need comprehensive ones as those of Google Analytics. It’s easy to connect Google Analytics to Squarespace but it’s not easy to configure Google Analytics to protect the statistical data from spamming bots (but that’s another topic for a future blog).

An example from our Google Analytics: Sessions during Final Exams Period (May 6th: Final CCC Exam for the Class of 2010 at King Abdulaziz University Faculty of Dentistry)

          Fortunately, Squarespace enables us to reach our goals regardless of our limited experience in building websites. With that being said, it isn't a piece of cake. 

Author: Yazan Aljohani

The Team

Author: Yazan Aljohani                  Editor: Khawla Aljohani                 Designer: Noha Alkurdi

The Idea

          It all started during our third year in dental school. Two colleagues and I were in charge of writing sheets for the Operative Dentistry course and by the end of the year we managed to make a plagiarized, un-referenced, & well-organized book of all the lectures we took. We even added some illustrations we drew (using Paint). In an effort to share our work with our peers, we approached a faculty member, who was at that time in charge of E-learning, to publish “our book”.  To our shock, we learned that our work is illegal (plagiarized & not referenced). One might say: “naïve”, but we actually learned a lot from that experience. We learned what plagiarism is, we improved our editing and writing skills, and most importantly we learned the topic well! Interestingly, it was at that time I first thought of a site on which learning resources can be shared since there was no suitable platform for “our book” (if it was legal).

          Fast forward to our fifth year in dental school, I have had some difficulties in Periodontics so I borrowed the Periodontics textbook from the school’s library and long story short I made a clinical manual; yet, this time without the mistakes of the Operative book. After I have had made the “Students Manual of Clinical Periodontics”; I made a second manual “Infection Control for Dental Students”. At the same time, my colleague, Khalid Alfaifi, have had just finished “Endodontic Diagnosis” a one page guide. Around that period of time, I realized we need a platform to share our work with peers and colleagues. For that purpose, I have searched the internet for ways to get our content to others. I stumbled upon some e-book publishing sites which offer statistics and that made me think “Awesome! … I can see the impact of our work”. After thorough searching and studying the idea more carefully, I realized that the best approach is to make a website dedicated to our audience (i.e. Saudi dental undergrads).

Author: Yazan Aljohani                  Editor: Khawla Aljohani                 Designer: Noha Alkurdi