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in reply to Why PM needs web stats

A simple solution would be to either add google analytics to the site and get the data processed for us or run some open source software over the web server logs.

That is not a solution, apache/mod_perl/PerlMonks already keeps logs/stats -- all that would do is share them with google

I'm not sure how hard it would be, but all you have to do is persuade gods to share some awstats generated pages with you

I vaguely recall a long time ago maybe some user-agent strings were posted, but I'm probably misremembering, its not listed on Stats Page

See also Most popular links on homenodes

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Re^2: Why PM needs web stats
by jdporter (Paladin) on Jul 11, 2012 at 21:48 UTC
    See also Most popular links on homenodes

    How is that helpful? Those are basically bookmarks. And the most-bookmarked pages are not necessarily the most visited pages. Far from it.

    (Not to mention that that data is nearly 7 years old.)

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      How is that helpful?

      Its interesting and links to interesting things, that is all.

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Re^2: Why PM needs web stats
by kimmel (Scribe) on Jul 11, 2012 at 23:20 UTC
    That is not a solution, apache/mod_perl/PerlMonks already keeps logs/stats -- all that would do is share them with google.

    Yes we would be sharing data with google and all the gods would have to do is add a js snippet to the site templates. A small and fast change, easy. Furthermore, google analytics (GA) would give us access to all kinds of search related and end user related data that is not collected by web server software. So yes using GA is a valid solution to this kind of data problem. If your real concern is privacy that is a valid point, which is why I suggested an open source option that can be run locally as well.

    I'm not sure how hard it would be, but all you have to do is persuade gods to share some awstats generated pages with you

    The purpose of this post was to start a dialog with the gods, pmdev and the community about what stats can do for PM. I know there are plenty of other front and backend developers on PM who use web stats to make better things or are interested in the issue.

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      Oh, you're back?

      Yes we would be sharing data with google and all the gods would have to do is add a js snippet to the site templates. A small and fast change, easy.
      Too easy.

      Furthermore, google analytics (GA) would give us access to all kinds of search related and end user related data that is not collected by web server software.
      But do we need it? PerlMonks seems to get along just fine without it, ever since 1999.
      Google knows enough about me already, anyways.

      If your real concern is privacy
      It is.

      that is a valid point,
      You'd better believe it.

      which is why I suggested an open source option that can be run locally as well.
      I think that's already being done, when needed. But why would we need it? The site is mostly compatible with any modern browser, so adding cruft to the templates will only irk people with increased page loading time. By the way, I use Ghostery to block any tracker I see, and I'm sure others do similar things as well.

      It's unneeded, I don't want it, and I hope the gods exercise good judgement when opting not to add any unnecessary cruft to the templates.

      ~Thomas~
      confess( "I offer no guarantees on my code." );
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        Ditto.

        I block GA for privacy and to a lesser extent bloat reasons. No need add GA to PM. PM is nearly or JS free currently, and I love that. The 1999 design of PM is fine. Very low amounts of CSS (compare PM in No Style vs Basic Page Style in FF), no JQuery crap. Fast on a P3 CPU. PM right now is how all websites should be. PCs and the Internet are a tool, if you want art, goto a gallery. Most web developers today and execs want the web to be a piece of art to hang on the wall or show in a powerpoint at the board meeting. Speed and usability come last today.

        IMHO if the website wont work on W3M/Links, its artsy garbage.
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      Stats are already available, they simply aren't shared with me and you, and as a reader I don't need to see stats

      As a pmdev I don't think I need to see stats either. The way I see it, stats are only of any use to gods, and well, gods can see them already --

      Are some pages slower than the rest of the site?

      yup, and tye has commented on this publicly from time to time ( about tweaking database servers , node cache yada yada )

      Regarding GA, read more about such tracking ideas in Facebook 'like' button.

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      GA needs Javascript. Browsers that can't execute Javascript and browsers that aren't allowed to execute Javascript will not execute that code. So GA does not get all information. How reliable can the output of GA be, given that lack of information? "Garbage in, garbage out".

      Apart from that, I once invested some time to dig through parts of the GA Javascript code. I don't remember all details, but it seems that the code sends back a lot of information to Google, and not all of that information seemed to be related to web statistics. It seemed that Google used the GA code to compare what was sent to a real browser with what was send to Google bots.

      AWStats is written in Perl. That's about all the positive facts I know about AWStats. When I used it last a few years ago, it made tons of wrong assumptions about sessions and users, and its only real use was to find broken links. But that could also be done with a combination of grep 404 error_log, sed or awk to find the page and referrer urls, and sort -u.

      Alexander

      --
      Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)
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