Who's hitting my website?

C0ppert0p · October 25, 2005

I'm interested in knowing who and where my hits are coming from and what they are looking at. The current graphs provided do not provide any information that is particularly useful for a business.

I'm assuming Smugmug is using some varient of Apache, possibly version 2. along with Tomcat, mod rewrite etc. some other app software and some db software.

Are the apache access logs available at all to somebody who knows how to use them? If not are there any plans to provide the pro customers with something like Webtrends reports, (well not Webtrends, because it is way overpriced.), but something like Webtrends that gives some decent reports.

Mike Lane · October 25, 2005

C0ppert0p wrote:

I'm interested in knowing who and where my hits are coming from and what they are looking at. The current graphs provided do not provide any information that is particularly useful for a business.

I'm assuming Smugmug is using some varient of Apache, possibly version 2. along with Tomcat, mod rewrite etc. some other app software and some db software.

Are the apache access logs available at all to somebody who knows how to use them? If not are there any plans to provide the pro customers with something like Webtrends reports, (well not Webtrends, because it is way overpriced.), but something like Webtrends that gives some decent reports.

http://www.statcounter.com

Andy · October 25, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

http://www.statcounter.com

statcounter, right on.

flyingpylon · October 25, 2005

Statcounter or variations thereof can be good if you accept their limitations. The problem is that you'll never be able to really tell who is requesting specific images (as opposed to pages) without seeing the logs. Based on previous discussions, I wouldn't expect that to be anytime soon.

Techman1 · October 25, 2005

I'm using Statcounter and can tell who is looking at what images. I can tell if someone is going back to the same image several times too. The free version only covers the first 100 page views, so that can get absorbed very quickly if you have a large number of images & categories to view. They offer an extended view for a monthly charge in case you are extremely interested in who is visiting your site.

Good luck in your search.

Fred

Fuzzytek · October 25, 2005

Recommended: StatCounter

flyingpylon wrote:

Statcounter or variations thereof can be good if you accept their limitations. The problem is that you'll never be able to really tell who is requesting specific images (as opposed to pages) without seeing the logs. Based on previous discussions, I wouldn't expect that to be anytime soon.

I'm using StatCounter also

and through the information on the log, I can get down to the IP address of the viewer - and know specifically what image they are viewing. I know where they came from, how long they stayed on my site, ... a lot of details. Granted the logsize of 100 for free subscription holds the detailed information for a short length of time. That's why they have paid subscriptions that increase your log size.

behr655 · October 26, 2005

I'm using starcounter also. I've just been re-setting the counter after 100 hits.

Bear

flyingpylon · October 26, 2005

I believe that what you guys are seeing are requests for the *page* that a given image is on, not the request for the image itself. There is a big difference.

Say that someone really liked your images and decided to hotlink them from another web site (or forum, or eBay, etc.). Statcounter would never be able to pick this up, yet it would certainly count against your Smugmug bandwidth.

If you're not familiar with hotlinking, it's when someone inserts an image tag in the HTML of a web page that directly references an image located on another web server somewhere. So to the average visitor, the image looks like part of the hotlinker's web site, yet the image does not exist on their web server and it uses up the original owner's bandwidth (not to mention violating their copyright). Granted, all of this can only happen if you have "external linking" turned on in your Smugmug galleries.

The other problem with Statcounter is that it's possible for people to "turn off" requests for tracking images in their browser. There probably aren't a huge number of people that do this, but some people see it as a security issue, and some security software will turn off these requests by default. So you won't be getting 100% accurate results.

All of that said, I always say that "There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there are web statistics". All of the methods for tracking web traffic have issues, you just have to know what they are so that you're not getting fooled.

Blurmore · October 26, 2005

Truly idiotic question from someone who doesn't know HTML from LOGO
Does the stat counter script go in the BODY tag box of smugmug co-branding?

rainforest1155 · October 26, 2005

Blurmore wrote:

Does the stat counter script go in the BODY tag box of smugmug co-branding?

Don't put it there - this might screw up your page. The footer is the best place to put it in.

Sebastian

Mike Lane · October 26, 2005

rainforest1155 wrote:

Don't put it there - this might screw up your page. The footer is the best place to put it in.

Sebastian

If you put it in the body box of your cobranding it WILL screw up your page.

rainforest1155 · October 26, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

If you put it in the body box of your cobranding it WILL screw up your page.

Haven't tried it myself - maybe SM has some code to prevent this from happening.

Sebastian

Blurmore · October 26, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

If you put it in the body box of your cobranding it WILL screw up your page.

I put it there because it said to on the stat site, and so far as I can tell...itdid not screw anything up

rainforest1155 · October 26, 2005

Blurmore wrote:

I put it there because it said to on the stat site, and so far as I can tell...itdid not screw anything up

What they meant there was to put it between <body> and </body> - the body part. The SM body tag field is that stuff that is put into the body tag - <body my code>. That's a whole different thing and even though it does seem to work for you, you never know if it'll work for every other browser out there.
To put it between <body> and </body>, like the statcounter guys advised you have to put it either into the footer html or header html (this will most likely disable the search bar and style selector of your homepage).

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

Blurmore · October 26, 2005

rainforest1155 wrote:

What they meant there was to put it between and - the body part. The SM body tag field is that stuff that is put into the body tag - . That's a whole different thing and even though it does seem to work for you, you never know if it'll work for every other browser out there.
To put it between and , like the statcounter guys advised you have to put it either into the footer html or header html (this will most likely disable the search bar and style selector of your homepage).

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

thanks I putit in the footer, and I'm hoping it still works

rainforest1155 · October 26, 2005

Blurmore wrote:

thanks I putit in the footer, and I'm hoping it still works

That's much better now. Just look at your statcounter log - you should have me (from Germany) going to your photoshop-gallery, getting the second photo medium-sized and then in large.

Sebastian

DavidTO · October 26, 2005

What about Mint?

mbrady · October 26, 2005

flyingpylon wrote:

I believe that what you guys are seeing are requests for the *page* that a given image is on, not the request for the image itself. There is a big difference.

Say that someone really liked your images and decided to hotlink them from another web site (or forum, or eBay, etc.). Statcounter would never be able to pick this up, yet it would certainly count against your Smugmug bandwidth.

You're correct. Statcounter will only get the info if a page with its code is served up. A direct link to an image will not be registered in the Statcounter log. But until and unless smugmug greatly beefs up their statistics reports, that's about the best solution for now.

Matt

Mike Lane · October 26, 2005

Blurmore wrote:

I put it there because it said to on the stat site, and so far as I can tell...itdid not screw anything up

Trust me please. What statcounter wants you to do is to put the code in the body of the document. What the body section of the smugmug cobranding does is replace the tag with what you put in there (this is something the statcounter people know nothing about). If you use any themes they won't work right. If you try to do any cobranding yourself, you're going to have a heck of a time trying to get things to work.

It is a simple matter of cutting and pasting from the body tag box to the footer html box.

EDIT: I see you did this... so nevermind.

Mike Lane · October 26, 2005

DavidTO wrote:

What about Mint?

That won't be something you can use on your smugmug site since it requires the ability to access a mySQL server and PHP neither of which you can do with your smugmug site.

On the other hand, that looks like a very interesting application for someone with dedicated hosting like...oh I don't know...me.

flyingdutchie · October 27, 2005

Blurmore wrote:

I put it there because it said to on the stat site, and so far as I can tell...itdid not screw anything up

I put this code as the last element inside my footer HTML:

< div id="page_stats" title="Number of Unique Visits to Flying Dutchie's">
... insert your StatCounter HTML code here ...
< /div>

It produces a flat text or images (depending how you configured it at StatCounter) showing you a count. I chose flat text, so i can style it using the #page_stats selector.

And a nice thing about StatCounter is that you don't have to show it on your page. If you do #page_stats { display: none; } is fine with them

-- Anton.

Mike Lane · October 27, 2005

flyingdutchie wrote:

And a nice thing about StatCounter is that you don't have to show it on your page. If you do #page_stats { display: none; } is fine with them
-- Anton.

Actually, you don't want to do it that way. Using display:none will make it so the layer and the counter are not loaded in the browsers. What you should do is go into your statcounter config and set it to be transparent from there.

flyingdutchie · October 27, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

Actually, you don't want to do it that way. Using display:none will make it so the layer and the counter are not loaded in the browsers. What you should do is go into your statcounter config and set it to be transparent from there.

mmmm Strange....
I had the {display:none;} on this element for a while and page-hits were registered by the StatCounter. Maybe the {display:none;} has this effect only on visual items (IMGs and elements with background-images, input type=image, etc)? Since < script> is non-visual, it is loaded and executed anyway...?<SCRIPT> is non-visual, it is loaded and executed anyway...?

-- Anton.
</div>  </td> <td class="controlbar"><fieldset id="smiliebox" title="Smilies"> <legend>Smilies</legend> <table cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="center"> <tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td>:):
</td> <td>:D
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/umph.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/mwink.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/iloveyou.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/headscratch.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td>:uhoh
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/clap.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td>:cry
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/1drink.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr> <tr> <td class="smallfont" colspan="3">url="http://#"]More[/url</td> </tr> </table></fieldset> <script type="text/javascript">  </SCRIPT>

Fuzzytek · November 1, 2005

Two counters???

flyingpylon wrote:

I believe that what you guys are seeing are requests for the *page* that a given image is on, not the request for the image itself. There is a big difference.

Say that someone really liked your images and decided to hotlink them from another web site (or forum, or eBay, etc.). Statcounter would never be able to pick this up, yet it would certainly count against your Smugmug bandwidth.

If you're not familiar with hotlinking, it's when someone inserts an image tag in the HTML of a web page that directly references an image located on another web server somewhere. So to the average visitor, the image looks like part of the hotlinker's web site, yet the image does not exist on their web server and it uses up the original owner's bandwidth (not to mention violating their copyright). Granted, all of this can only happen if you have "external linking" turned on in your Smugmug galleries.

The other problem with Statcounter is that it's possible for people to "turn off" requests for tracking images in their browser. There probably aren't a huge number of people that do this, but some people see it as a security issue, and some security software will turn off these requests by default. So you won't be getting 100% accurate results.

All of that said, I always say that "There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there are web statistics". All of the methods for tracking web traffic have issues, you just have to know what they are so that you're not getting fooled.

Working on the internet is so fully customizable that I would agree - you'll miss instances where people are taking counter-measures. I also see your point about hits on the IMAGE file rather than the page. The only place we can get that is from the log at SmugMug, which isn't currently offered.

I'm glad that I did add StatCounter to my site because I can now demonstrate to potential advertisers the traffic that my site gets. If I spend a little more I can offer better stats that would justify adjusting rates for advertising down the road also. Because then I can inform of more demographics.

Back to the SmugMug log - since images can be sold (via eBay, etc) without accessing the pages of the site we really are at a loss to demonstrate direct traffic (via links). I also link images into blog posts, so I'm at a loss to identify who has seen what I do through those, unless I run stats on that blog also and combine.

Ultimately I could use the same StatCounter on all sites with my images - blog, smugmug, ebay pages, etc. But it still fails to get images linked on other people's blogs and websites. What this fails to do is give traffic for the individual sites then.

Does it make sense to have TWO counters on a page (one for site, second for images across all sites)?

Mike Lane · November 1, 2005

flyingdutchie wrote:

mmmm Strange....
I had the {display:none;} on this element for a while and page-hits were registered by the StatCounter. Maybe the {display:none;}<script> is non-visual, it is loaded and executed anyway...?

-- Anton.
</div>  </td> <td class="controlbar"><fieldset id="smiliebox" title="Smilies"> <legend>Smilies</legend> <table cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="center"> <tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td>:):
</td> <td>:D
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/umph.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/mwink.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/iloveyou.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/headscratch.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td>:uhoh
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/clap.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr><tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td>:cry
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td> <td><img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/1drink.gif" border="0" alt="" >
</td></tr> <tr> <td class="smallfont" colspan="3">url="http://#"]More[/url</td> </tr> </table></fieldset> <script type="text/javascript">  </script> has this effect only on visual items (IMGs and elements with background-images, input type=image, etc)? Since < script> is non-visual, it is loaded and executed anyway...?

Hmmm. Perhaps. At any rate, the easiest solution would certainly be to configure your statcounter rather than alter your browser.

ann · November 3, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

Hmmm. Perhaps. At any rate, the easiest solution would certainly be to configure your statcounter rather than alter your browser.

Hi, I have you gotten smut email since you put the starcounter on your web page?

pmaland · November 14, 2005

Just a bump w/ a new choice
http://www.google.com/analytics

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You'll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.

Free.

Google Analytics gives us an opportunity to invest in our advertisers and everyone else who wants to create quality content on the web. Instead of spending money on web analytics, you can focus on creating targeted, ROI-driven marketing campaigns, and on improving your site design and content.

Khaos · November 14, 2005

In checking more into this, I'v gotten people not just from the US, but from Japan (Quaker parrot search), Saudi Arabia (my landscape galleries), and England.

Kind of cool to look at.

JimM · November 17, 2005

Mike Lane wrote:

That won't be something you can use on your smugmug site since it requires the ability to access a mySQL server and PHP neither of which you can do with your smugmug site.

On the other hand, that looks like a very interesting application for someone with dedicated hosting like...oh I don't know...me.

We (Turtlehut) offer Awstats http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ for all of our customers.

Mike Lane · November 17, 2005

ann wrote:

Hi, I have you gotten smut email since you put the starcounter on your web page?

Geeze ann, it's tough to say. I've gotten smut email since around oh 1997 or 1998 so it's difficult to notice any increase due to statcounter.

gmail has a great filtering system though so mostly I don't even notice.

mmrphoto · February 13, 2006

counter?
I'm trying to get the starcounter into my website but I don't think I did it right. I'm on a mac and I don't know exactly where to put the html. The directions seemed to be for PC users.. any suggestions?

Who's hitting my website?

Comments