I’d love to be able to write something like http://kingsumo.com/apps/headlines/ that worked with Hugo. I’m thinking that it would be a combination of javascript, server-side analytics and eventual resolution.
Have an array of different headlines in the front matter.
On the build, add all those headlines as javascript variables, which will be auto-rotated.
The effectiveness of each headline will be tracked with Google Analytics or some other package.
After x amount of time (defined in the front matter or site config), make an API call using https://github.com/spf13/hugo/pull/748 to see what the top performer is, then lock that in as the permanent page title.
Does that sound like a reasonable way to approach things? Are all of the right hooks available in the Hugo build process to make it happen?
I like the idea, being a static site generator and all. I would probably think a little simpler:
Add the different titles to front matter, each with an id (I’m not sure how GA works with this, but I assume it needs a label of kind)
At BUILD TIME, pick the next (or random?) title.
Then do builds n times a day
Then write a script that picks and locks “the winner” after n days
And having the title “fixed” (as not client generated) might also make it possible to get these different headlines into the Facebook / Twitter previews?
@bjornerik I thought about doing something like that, but short of deploying once a minute or something, it would be hard to really make the results statistically significant. Most times you post, you’ll see a spike in initial traffic that tails off, and your early visitors will be a different demographic than those who come later.
You might be able to get away with a switch or two at the beginning, but Facebook for sure caches the title and image, so you can’t switch things around much. I believe that after 50 views or so they lock it in.