I have a db table that captures visitor info, including a user agent string. I'm trying to determine the demographics of browsers in order to prioritize web testing on higher incidence browsers/versions.
My question: user agents appear very similar to me; is there any way I can write a query to differentiate the strings into their representative browsers/versions?
Thanks in advance.
Note: my company does not have google analytics configured to track this info, and we need to measure data on file rather than waiting for new visitors.
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I have a REST API built with PHP & MySQL for storing ads.
My database contains an ads table and a users table.
I want to bump the view count for every ad once a user is viewing it (only once, if he views it for the 2nd time, I don't want to raise the count again).
Also, how do I go about setting up a service for the client? Psychologically it seems very aggressive to make a server request each time a user is watching an ad, it could get to hundreds of requests at the same time.
Thanks! :)
I am trying to implement visitor counter on a project but I am confused about one thing and it is what to accurately count as one visit or view. If I go with IP based counter then it means even if many people are visiting the website on same computer with same IP (like from a cyber cafe or a shared pc) it will count as one visit. If I go with simply incrementing visits every time homepage is opened then someone can keep refreshing the homepage to increase the count and it will not be accurate page views count.
So neither option gives accurate picture of visits.
So I am thinking of implementing IP based page views and if someone opens the homepage with same IP before 5 minutes it will not be counted as another view. Only after five minutes page count will be increase for same IP. So I want to ask whether this approach will give most accurate page view count or there is any other optimal solution?
Google analytics cannot be used as this website will be used on an intranet network.
Google Analytics is still an option for internal websites. I created a workflow application which is only available through our internal network, but Google Analytics still works. Only requirement is that the user that uses the application has internet access, so that the Google-Analytics Snippet can communicate with the servers.
I'd not recommend using your own methods to count visitors, unless you're planning to show these informations for all users (like it is the case with the view here on SO). You could still create some kind of internal mechanism easily, given the fact that people authenticate on your application or you can identify them somehow else.
Google Analytics and other tracking applications use cookies through javascript to track page visits and especially visitors. Due to the fact that cookies can be unique per session of a browser, this makes identifying different people on the same IP more easy.
However as #Ahatius points out, better not to reinvent the wheel if possible.
Google Analytics also has a php api (which I've successfully implemented in the past). However in that scenario you still have to do decide by yourself how to identify visitors and pageviews.
I would like to keep track of IP addresses visiting my site, as it helps determine what content I should host.
I a really not a programmer, so i was looking for a pre-built solution.
I found this script:
<?php
$LogFileLocation = "/public_html/cms/iplog.txt";
$fh = fopen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$LogFileLocation,'at');
fwrite($fh,date('dMy H:i:s')."\t".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."\t".$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']."\n");
fclose($fh);
?>
however when i created iplog.txt and browse to it, nothing happens.
If you need only statistic of visiting of your site why you don't use Google Analitics (http://www.google.com/analytics/)? It gives full information on how to track visits onto the site. Your method gives you only text file with date, user's ip and page which user visited; but if you aren't a programmer, you will not sort this information and operated this data.
If you still decide to use your method of store information and don't want to use Google Analitics, then save data about user and visited pages in the database in special created table (id, date, ip, uri). This method will permit show date-statistic, statistic for ip and single page.
You can capture IP of the visitor with the following code.
$ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
Now you can store it in your database. For that you have to create a column in your database table that stores the ip address. Along with IP address, you can store many other information in the database for keeping track of users like time stamp, duration, page visits etc. There are many tools available like Google Analytic and others which provide you such services free of cost but they don't store the record in your website's database. So choose accordingly.
I would like to know if is there any possible way to show the total number of users of a specific country in my webpage. As far as I found, you can not get it through API.
I'm guessing you really want the total number of users on facebook who have 'liked' or used facebooks oauth to connected with your site.
Do you use graph api in your site? I'm pretty sure you can query by country name--as long as the user's who have shared that info with you have provided it.
Check this out... http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/
And this: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/insights/
From their site
Facebook Insights provides the ability to see geographic and
demographic data for people that have Liked a Page or installed an
app. Location data is based on the geographic location of each person
as determined by their browser IP address and is limited to the top 20
countries and cities. All other demographic information is aggregated
and non-personally identifiable.
Generic searches can be done like this:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=location&place=166793820034304
Where the place id is the id for whatever you want to search on.
https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=location&place=166793820034304
Disclamer: This method is not supported by Facebook. Use it at your own risk. I take no responsibility whatsoever.
Go to: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/adscreator/
Fill in the ad info with something random (eg. google.com as the url)
In the next part you'll notice a dynamic reach estimation that changes depending on the parameters you select, including country. Try changing the country and observe the network activity with for instance the developers tools of Google Chrome.
Call the ajax url that returns the json data with the proper parameters programatically, this should be easy to figure out in the previous step.
Collect and store the json data for your evil deeds.
???
PROFIT!
The actual ajax call and parameters change from time to time, which is why I didn't include them directly, but it should be easy enough to figure it all out. Also note that they are estimates, even if they come from Facebook, they don't count every single user every time an advertiser sets up an ad — it's the best estimate you can possibly get though.
This method as I mentioned is neither official nor supported by Facebook, but sites like socialbakers.com or checkfacebook.com have been using them for ages. (There, I revealed the secret)
I am a web developer and I want to design a commercial website to sell a customer's product. Sell and buy activities are important and I need to maintain user activity information to keep the site secure.
I want to write a dynamic website. I want to control all user activity and then decide whether to save user activity information in a database. Some of site's visitors are registered users and some are anonymous. I want to save online information such as ip address, username, page name, and date/time for my registered users.
I want to know:
How do I save a user's IP address?
What more do I need to save?
Saving each HTTP request details into database will work for low traffic web sites, but you will have performance issues in case of popular website, since writing to database in relatively slow operation.
Why not to use server HTTP logs instead?
All HTTP web servers create plain text log files which record remote user IP address, URL requested, etc. You can create activity report by writing your own script or using log file report tools. AWStats ( http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ ) is one of the most popular open-source tools for this.
On client side you can use Google Analytics to track user activity. It also provides means to track custom events:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'login', 'user_login', "custom data"]);
More info at: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncUsageGuide.html
This option only tracks users with JavaScript enabled, so it won't show bots, crawlers or users having analytics blocking addons installed.
I'm not sure I understand all of your question...but to address at least one aspect of it, if the user is behind a proxy, then you have no way of determining what their real IP is. That's the whole point. The proxy is the one making the request and then forwarding it. Without asking the proxy yourself, you cannot determine that. With regards to what else you need to save, it depends entirely on what you want to do and you haven't done a good job of explaining why you are saving this data. If you can clarify that, perhaps we can help you a bit more in determining what data you should be saving.
Edit To address your clarification, if you wanted to be crazy, you could log everything that a person does. Every link they click, every product they view, etc. I don't necessarily advocate that as I find it a bit creepy, but there are definitely sites that do it. At the bare minimum, I would suggest logging what products people look at and then what products they buy. I would also log that information on a per-session basis. Basically, what products do people look at and then end up buying on the same trip to your store. I wouldn't worry too much about the "real" IP address. Most people won't be behind a proxy and those that are, you can't do anything about anyway.
How do I save a user's IP address?
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']
What more do I need to save?
That's quite strange question. It's your application, not someone's else. How can we guess what information you need?
However, at least one issue I can point out: a page name is not sufficient to log "all user activity". Query string and POST data usually contains important details on that activity.