From: rbs{at}snippets.org
To: c_echo{at}yahoogroups.com

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 Charles Angelich wrote:

> Search engine placement can generate page accesses but the numbers of
> page accesses don't relate what percentage didn't like/use what they
> found when they got there. A certain number would just 'click away' and
> not use the website. :-\

Quite true.

> RBS> Likewise this past weekend. I can see from the hit counter
> RBS> that folks are checking out the new pages, but no one's
> RBS> saying anything. Criticism, kudos, they're all the same -
> RBS> any feedback is useful.
>
> If your server software has the capability webmasters assume that any
> user who leaves the website within 20 seconds considered the website an
> accidental access that they did not want (from search engine pages
> usually).

My current hit counters are pretty primitive PHP affairs. I should do some
further work on them...

> I had similar problems and wanted to focus my energy on the pages and
> links users really wanted to use. I installed 'hidden' page counters
> (CGI) on each page and CGI that records clicks on links. Since CGI is
> server-side it does not interfere with early or text-only browsers but I
> can see what is being used and what is being ignored. :-)

Generally, I prefer PHP to cgi, mostly because of better familiarity. As
any book on either will tell you, both have their particular strengths and
weaknesses. Unlike most folks, though, I typically use cgi with compiled
applications rather then with Perl or some other interpreter.

> btw: On the "http://www.snippets.org/SNIPPETS/_DOS/browser.php"
> page I got an error message:
>
> Warning: filemtime(): Stat failed for code/COMBIN.C
> (errno=2 - No such file or directory) in /var/www
> /docs-snippets.org/SNIPPETS/_DOS/browser.php on line 75

I think you'll find all of these fixed now. The problem with combin.c was
a case-sensitivity issue. Also, there were some complications
reconfiguring Apache and the zone files to support the new aliases as
noted in my revised .signature, below. After a little tweaking and
allowing time for the various caches to flush, dos.snippets.org now seems
to work just fine.

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