Stop The Bleeding

Counters

by

Pasta

Pasta's Pissers

Did ya miss me? Had to deal with a dose of reality the past few weeks. Saw some posts on the board about counters and such, that prompted me to offer a possible solution. Counters as we all know are traffic bleeds. Some you can make money from. Bottom line you have to add some code to your page to count the hits, hits that you are getting from your efforts of generating traffic. The more you want the counter to do functionally for you the more code you need to insert into your pages. Slowing down your page loading time. Did you ever consider utilizing your logfiles from your domains? Your logfiles contain a wealth of information about your domain, your pages, visits, unique visitors, se robots, countries, keywords, browsers, keywords. The most important factor with using an alternate stats proggie for your domains is YOU set the parameters. Not the pre-determined settings an admin feels you should have.

Pasta's Cool DFN Link Of The Week

How You Doin?
Does your stats proggie suck?

A Solution: Awstats

I came across Source Forge last January while looking for a server side graphics script to generate thumbnails on line. Source Forge has a lot of open source code and code snippets you can get lost there so be fore warned. I was always aware of Awstats but could never get it going :/ Awstats shows you statistical as well as graphical information pertaining to a particular domain and a whole lot more. I decided to use Awstats once I started my SE submissions for my TGP I needed something that could show hits from european countries and my stats proggie sucked for the information I was looking for. I have been using Awstats for the past few weeks and feel very comfortable with it and the feedback it is providing so far.

Curious? Lets get started. The first step to setting up Awstats is downloading the script. Once that is done follow the read me file, the script itself is commented well and easy to follow. There is a working demo on-line, follow the link of the week and check it out. If you like it, implement it. It could give you the boost in confidence you need to try scripting and possibly set up your first script.

The Config File

The first step is gaining read write permissions to your server logfiles. You will need to contact your admin for the path to the file and enter the path into the main setup section of the script. I am giving you the settings that I have been using, as a little nudge to try something new. My settings are as follows :

Logfile="Your admin will give you your path"
LogFormat="1" for apache combined format
Dnslookup="0" default is 1 changed when the stats wouldn't update, page timed out
Allow to update from browser=1
PurgeLogFile=1
ArchiveLogRecords=0
DirCgi="path to the cgi-bin and directory where the script resides" 777 this directory
DirIcons="path where Icons reside" (outside the cgi-bin)
lang="your primary language"
DefaultFile="index.html"
HostAliases=" " use default setting
SkipHosts=" " use default setting
SkipDnsLookup= " " use default setting
Skip Files=" " use default setting,
OnlyFiles=" " use default setting
WarningMessages="1" will show set up problems if you encounter them
Show Links On Url=1 Clickable links "cool feature"
ShowFlagsLinks=1 default setting cool feature to see European hits by country
SplitSearchString=0 keywords as a full search string "Big Tits" if set to 1 reports "big" and "tits" as separate keywords

How Much Information Do You Need

The Last Section of the Config File is your logfile feedback, the statistics you will have in your browser, the number of lines for the reports:

Bar width and height default setting are 260/180. I set mine to 260/220.

Each of the following variables has a minimum setting of one, I set mine as follows:

MaxNbofdomain=100
maxNbofHostsShown=50
MaxNbofrobotShown=100
MaxNbofPageShown=150 (these are your pages)you will have to adjust this according to your domain
StatsBypageShown=150
MaxNbofRefererShown=100 who is sending you hits
MaxNbofKeywordsShown=100 (very useful info)

The remainder of the file is the html layout colors, background etc. I left the default settings. My setup parameters will get you up and running. The only thing I can do is suggest that you try the proggie, hell its free and a new version was just released.

So I just showed you how to set up a stats script, a possible solution to adding a counter to your pages. Say you build a tgp page and mirror the page for arguments sake 5 times. Call the pages: clean.htm (no recip) gal00001.html, gal20000.html, gal03000.html, gal00040.html and gal05000.html. Upload the pages to your server, and submit. The next time you "update awstats" you should see activity on these pages. Plain and simple unless your galleries were rejected. Any Page that has activity/clicks on your domain will show activity without a counter on your pages. So basically what you have is a solution/tourniquet to stop your bleeding.

Hasta Pasta