Thursday
(0)We started off on Samizdata.net with a sitemeter.com tracker... alas the java version which tracks referrals refused to work when we upgraded our site to Movable Type, so we added a Extreme tracker. That too is doing strange things now since our latest Movable Type upgrade (all referrals are being recorded as coming from our MT installation rather than the actual referral page) and as I have never, not once, got a reply from their tech support people no matter how often I send them messages (and I have their premium paid-for version), I am looking for recommendations regarding:
- What might be causing our problem with the Extreme's tracker?
- And is the java version of sitemeter's premium counter likely to work with MT 2.6x?
- Are there any better premium trackers out there as I hate to keep paying for crap service from Extreme?
Any suggestions?
You could run one direct, out of your cgi-bin. There are also PHP trackers out there.
Alternately you could not bother with trackers at all, and just look at your site statistics on Cpanel.
HM has a pre-installed CGI counter (you'll find it under CGI in the CPanel), if you just want "see how many readers we get" bragging rights. ;)
Posted by Kathy K at June 12, 2003 08:34 PM
I had a similar problem with Extreme Tracker when I first installed it. It turned out it was because I had subtly changed the pasted code (I removed the line breaks). The folks at Extreme had me repaste it exactly as it came off their site. I haven't had a problem with it since.
Posted by John Hudock at June 12, 2003 09:22 PM
Transport Blog has a Java Site Meter and it works just fine.
The only thing is that I did install a completely new tracker when I moved over from Blogspot for some reason. It may have been that the old one didn't work on the new site. I can't remember.
Posted by Patrick Crozier at June 12, 2003 09:31 PM
Site Meter has worked fine for me in all versions of MT. Just keep it at the bottom of the page because it does screwy things with any HTML that follows it.
Posted by Robert Prather at June 13, 2003 01:34 AM
Kathy K's comments about the cgi-bin are probably dead-on. I don't do PHP, since my free site only has a Perl compiler, but I've got a Perl hit counter on my site which has fairly simple code -- it just looks up a hash on another page, prints out the number of hits, increments that number, and then rewrites the file. I'd bet there are free scripts out there that look at IP address and other stuff as well.
Posted by Ted Schuerzinger at June 13, 2003 03:12 AM
Most of these tracking options (Bravenet, extreme and the like) understate traffic by a fair degree in my experience..
If you've got Control Panel then yeah use that- ask your hosting company to help you with the stats.
Posted by Scott Wickstein at June 13, 2003 04:17 AM
I run a Sitemeter java tracker on my MT site with no problem. I used Extreme for an old site of mine, and the tech support was atrocious and rude, especially considering I was shelling out a monthly fee to them.
Posted by Jackie D at June 13, 2003 04:24 AM
Stone the crows!!!! I have been looking at the server stats as Scott suggested and it seems our discrete traffic is actually about 50% greater than we thought! Why do hit counters under count, I wonder? Anyone know?
Posted by Perry de Havilland at June 13, 2003 09:20 AM
Hmm..maybe because some of us users have java & flash (etc) turned off by default for all websites?
Posted by Andy at June 13, 2003 01:17 PM
Hi Perry,
have a look here for an idea of how hard it is to get real results from a hit counter.
Posted by David at June 13, 2003 01:30 PM
And also, there can be packet loss between your server and the extreme server- so I might visit your site, and the counter sends a packet to say 'add one more visitory' to your count at the extreme site, and it can get lost in transit.
That's just my theory anyway.
Posted by Scott Wickstein at June 13, 2003 04:35 PM
FYI: java and javascript are two separate beasts; java came first, and the name javascript is a Netscape marketing innovation. If you had java on your page, there'd be a noticeable delay if you hadn't run java before then.
Posted by The Lonewacko Blog at June 14, 2003 06:20 AM
