I need to track traffic between a specific set of web sites. I would then store the number of clicks in a database table with the fields fromSite, toSite, day, noOfClicks. The complete urls are unimportant - only web site identity is needed.
I've ruled out redirects since I don't want my server to be a single point of failure. I want the links to work even if the tracking application or server is down or overloaded.
Another goal is to minimize the work each participating site has to do in order for the tracking to work.
What would be the best way to solve this problem?
The best way is to use an analytics program like Google Analytics, and to review the reports for each domain.
Do you have access to the logs on all of the sites in question? If so, you should be able to extract that data from the log files (Referer header).
You could place an onclick event on to each link that goes between each site. the onclick would then call some javascript which could do a server call back to register the click.
Related
I am currently running a website where I promote different coffees from pubs in my city. On my website I have links to the different coffees.
I have recently seen some of this links being shared on Facebook and other social networks.
So I was wondering if it is somehow possible to track how often one of this links are being clicked?
I have tried using redirects to my site but Facebook uses my pictures in the previews, whereas I don't want this because it is misleading.
I have seen that this works with Bitly so it must somehow be possible?
And there are of course different services providing this, but it would be nice if it would run without any foreign services.
So basically I am looking for a solution which will let me know how often a link, origination from my site was clicked in Facebook, Google+ or any other forum.
There definitely is. Try looking into Google Analytics, it will show you show much data from your personal websites and links that it can blow your mind! Here is the link
Google Analytics helps you analyze visitor traffic and paint a
complete picture of your audience and their needs. Track the routes
people take to reach you and the devices they use to get there with
reporting tools like Traffic Sources. Learn what people are looking
for and what they like with In-Page Analytics. Then tailor your
marketing and site content for maximum impact.
You can even get a free package to use!
Hope this helps!
Yes you have plenty of analytical options.
Something as straight forward as Google Analytics for example.
If you are using cpanel on your hosts server, you even have options such as AWSTATS, which will also provide information.
If all else fails you can even use post data stored in your apache / nginx logs.
Since you have amended your question you might want to check out this tool. It is not google. :)
It is called Click Meter and performs Link Tracking and provides click reports, etc
I am trying to work out where to put the responses to a GravityForm that I have hosted on WordPress. GravityForms displays them as entry/detail which is not a good way to see how many of x people there are etc.
I need an excel-esqe grid that can be edited by multiple users, so I was thinking Google docs, but I would rather keep the data on my server.
My end users are not particularly IT literate so the front end needs to be quite user friendly.
Is there any solution that I can host on my server and post data in to? I was playing with the idea of writing the form responses to a separate WordPress table but I need a very easy way to edit them.
I'd be grateful to hear any feedback or ideas you have
Manual data copy
EtherCalc is good. The problem is how to get the data in and out of the spreadsheet,
if a manual export and import will work, then you can use EtherCalc.
EtherCalc is a google docs style spreadsheet, edited by multiple users.
You can host it on your own server.
Pay a developer to automate
As above, but pay a developer to automate the movement of data. Would take a few days of work.
Google docs form
I saw a google docs forms plugin that does this already. Maybe you saw that already.
EtherCalc forms feature.
I will add a forms feature to EtherCalc over xmas.
I was redirected here by Shopify support. I have three main questions for a project I'll be working on and wanted to see how possible some of the things would be.
We are looking to develop a plugin for use with Shopify to track purchases through the use of a link shortener (to see which link referred what purchases, etc.). I have a few questions that I'm not 100% sure on even after reading through the documentation.
The first problem that I seem to have is tracking the query string that the link shortener appends to the URL once it redirects. For this service, they use "?visit_id={hash}" and I need to be able to access this--at the very least on the "Thank You" page after an order. I saw in the docs that there is "landing_page_ref" (http://wiki.shopify.com/Order#landing_site_ref) but considering our query string is "visit_id" instead of one of the acceptable parameters, how would I be able to use that query string?
Lastly, I just have a question about how webhooks work with plugins that are on the app store. I know I can just call webhooks to wherever I want, like my personal server, but if this app gets onto the app store, I obviously don't want to hook everything to my own server. Is there a way to make it run on the store itself, and which URL should I use?
Lastly, what is the preferred method for handling configuration options for the plugin? Is there a way to hook into the admin backend or would all configuration have to be in a file within the plugin?
Thanks,
Andrew
I'll do my best to answer these for you. It sounds like you're used to building plugins for something like Wordpress - Shopify apps are a bit different.
You can't access anything on the thank you page for the order.
The thank you page/checkout process goes through a secured Shopify page that you don't have access to - so if you want information about what your URL shortener attached to the store pages, you'll need to retrieve it while they're on the page (using something like a ScriptTag + Javascript to track the query string), or hope that it's inside the Order when you retrieve it later (using the API or a webhook).
Webhooks need to talk to a server you run.
They send the information to you, and then you process it and deal with it. If you want to use webhooks, you will need to run a server with your app on it for the webhooks to talk to.
You manage your own config.
Because you're running your own server to handle those webhooks, you handle configuration for your plugin there. The apps I've worked on typically have their own database for managing configuration options, as well as an admin panel to manage them (it's what the user accesses when they click 'Log Into [Your App]' on the "Manage Apps" screen).
You'll need to run your own server to host your Shopify app.
Here's my issue. I have a site that provides some investing services, I pay for end of day data which is all I really need for my service but I feel its a bit odd when people check in during the day and it only displays yesterdays closing price. End of day is fine for my analytics but I want to display delayed quotes on my site.
According to the yahoo's YQL faq: If you use IP based authentication then you are limited to 1000 calls/day/IP, if my site grows I may exceed that but I was thinking of trying to push this request to the people browsing my site themselves since its extremely unlikely that the same IP will visit my site 1,000 times a day(my site itself has no use for this info). I would call a url from their browser, then parse the results so I can allow them to view it in the format of the sites template.
I'm new to web development so I'm wondering is it a common practice or a bad idea to have the users browser make the api call themselves?
It is not a bad idea at all:
You stretch up limitations this way;
Your server will respond faster (since it does not have to contact the api);
Your page will load faster because the initial response is smaller;
You can load the remaining data from the api in async manner while your UI is already responsive.
Generally speaking it is a great idea to talk with api's from the client. It's more dynamic, you spread traffic, more responsiveness etc...
The biggest downside I can think of is depending on the availability of other services. On the other hand your server(s) will be stressed less because of spreading the traffic.
Hope this helped a bit! Cheers!
When facebook rolls out a new version of their site, they show it to a percentage of users first.
How could I go about doing this cleanly?
Have your users sign up for your Beta.
Select a certain percentage of those who sign up for your Beta. As you make changes, keep incrementally adding some more testers. You don't want to let everyone in at once so you can get testing all the way up until the feature is complete and released. Look at stackoverflow as an example.
You would do this because most of the people who sign up will check out your beta version, then leave. They most likely will not come back / keep testing for you.
It is also better to opt-in than opt-out. Your users may not want to be your test subjects.
With a proxy that diverts some fraction of the sessions to one of two separate running instances. The proxy can be a software proxy on the hosting machine.
Well, depending on the change, if you have a farm of web servers you could apply the change to only some of the servers in the farm. That way only certain users who were "lucky" enough to hit one of the updated servers would see the change. Of course, this approach assumes that your web proxy will always route any given user to the same server (or group of updated servers) in the farm.