Posted by Jerry Stuckle on 04/05/06 21:46

johnny wrote:
> hi all!
>
> I am starting to study the best way to track site visitors.
> Logfiles stats which come with every web hosting, have little metrics
> to be analyzed and also problems with cached pages which are not seen.
> I thought to use php and cookies to track returning visitors, however I
> see that all pro solutions use javascript to set cookies.
> Now since I prefer to avoid js as much as I can cause they can be
> blocked by browser settings, is it the same to use php to set cookies ?
>
> I think that page tagging solutions also rely on a remote script to
> read cookie and inserting data on a text file or a database table, so
> php should be fine, however i wonder if with php I could have the same
> caching problem as with log files, I mean maybe only javascript being a
> client side language can avoid the cached pages problem?
>
> How do u track your visitors?
>
> probably the best option is to read log files for server metrics such
> as spiders visits, error pages , and using page tagging with
> javascript or php for more qualitative tasks such as conversions,
> keywords referrer and so on.
>
>
> TIA
>
> johnny
>

Johnny,

There's no good way to track visitors.

As you've probably already seen, IP addresses aren't reliable. But neither are
cookies. As you indicated, they might not have Javascript on. However, they
might have their browser set to delete cookies when they close the browser. So
even if you set a cookie it won't be there next time.

You can get an idea of what visitors generally are doing on your site by the log
files. And you can track what individual users are doing in the same browser
session via cookies.

Generally I look at the log files to see which pages are popular and which
aren't. And I track sales. But I don't track individual visitors.

--
==================
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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
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