[SEL] O.T. Hit Counter (somewhat O.T.)

[Jerry Evans]

At 07:00 PM 07/02/2010, you wrote:
>Message: 1
>Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 17:30:44 +0000
>From: Listerdiesel <listerdiesel at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [SEL] O.T. Hit Counter
>To: The SEL email discussion list <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
><snip>
>On 6 February 2010 16:08, Elden DuRand <edurand at mchsi.com> wrote:
> >?Without a counter, I have no idea at all if anyone uses the site.
> > Thanks!>
> > Take care - Elden
>
>The hit counters register visitors passing through the page where
>their code is located, they don't appear to have any way to register
>visitors who go direct to a specific page or url.
>
>We've had one for years, but the figures are meaningless unless you
>can have ALL the visitor information.

Hi Elden and Peter,
         (**** APOLOGY to other list members - this is not about engines 
and will only be of interest to guys who spend time developing their 
(engine) webpages. Apologies but the "delete" key is right there on the 
bottom right hand side of most keyboards - use it!*** not you Jim D there 
is a question for you lower down :-))

         On my Oldengine page I have also made use of a few of the "hit 
counters" offered as freebies by many sites on the net but as Peter 
mentions they only work on the particular page that they are placed on 
(there may be others available that I do not have experience with). They 
are great when you put up a new page (with a counter on that page) and send 
the link (to that page) to (say) the lists. As you (Elden) mentioned they 
let you know if people are really interested in what you have to say.

         In my experience of the "free counters" I have found the following 
drawbacks
         i) You have to give your e-mail address to register or receive the 
code (not all of them but their spiders will find it on your site) - this 
leads to an increase in spam sent to you. (Nothing is free - they sell your 
address to spammers to cover their costs and make a profit). This is easy 
to overcome by getting a free email addy from someone like hotmail and 
giving it a unique and recognizable name like 
"register-freecount at hotmail.com". Use this address when signing up and when 
spam gets delivered to this account you know where it came from.

         ii) Some of them only allow the use of the code on one page. When 
you put up another page you have to set up a different false e-mail address 
to do so. O.K., it's not a major problem, if you're prepared to do that 
then it's fine.

         iii) Again, as mentioned by Peter, anyone clicking on the link 
that you send by e-mail will only be counted as a hit on that page. This is 
fine for most of us but it will not reflect actual "hits" on your site - 
ie. anyone entering through your front page from a search engine or website 
link.

         Having said that, I do not want to be totally negative - the free 
counters are useful and will allow you to see information that you want 
(Does anyone look at my page?)- just understand that nothing is "free" and 
you will (in most cases) get extra spam but that can be overcome.

         (Maybe I'm just obsessed with spam but I'm very proud of the fact 
that I've had my main e-mail address from early internet days, somewhere 
about 1991/2 or thereabouts and am in a constant fight against spam. This 
address is on many spam lists but I do not want to delete it so spend a lot 
of time writing "rules" on the server. Just one of my idiosyncrasies !)

         ***(Engine guys, if you ignored my previous warning, I strongly 
advise you to use that "delete" button now :-) except you Jim D )***

         O.K. away from free counters. Nothing beats proper web site 
statistics. On my business site as well as the new Club site our web 
hosting company supplies really good statistics (from a third party 
company) probably very similar to the graph the Peter supplied. In these 
stats I can see so much data - I can see I.P. addresses that the request 
for my page came from, hits per week, hits per day, hits per hour, did the 
hit's come from bookmarks or search engines, which search engines indexed 
the site, how often and when and many more stats. but that's irrelevant to 
our discussion.

         Now my question to Jim but first let me once again thank you, Jim 
Dunmeyer, for the tremendous gift that you give us engine people by 
allowing us to place our websites on Oldengine.org with no restrictions, no 
advertising, no nonsense. I probably understand what this costs you more 
than most.

         Jim, on my business website, the provider has a very small CGI 
script that I can place on any page and it puts a counter on that page (the 
same as all the free counters but without the spam)(you can "view 
source"  on <www.vaaloldwheels.org.za/nav.html>    near the bottom). This 
counter only works on the page it is placed on (as mentioned) and is not 
part of the aforementioned "web site statistics". I can put it on any page 
of the site (same code) and it will place a counter there independent of 
any other counters on the site. The advantage being that I do not need to 
register (and receive spam). Does the "Oldengine.org" server support cgi 
and do they have a script (and the corresponding files on the server) like 
this available that we could use without costing you anything extra?

         That's all for now, apologies for the long uninteresting (to most) 
post but as we all know "S**t H*****s". :-) ( I did warn you to use the 
"Delete" button!!!)


Keep the revs up (or down)
Jerry Evans
Near Johannesburg in Sunny South Africa.
Etched Brass Engine Plates made to order:
<www.oldengine.org/members/evans/plates/index.htm>