What are your visitors doing on your site?Logging system that lets you keep track of what your visitors are doing ( or not doing ) at your site |
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Current version:
n/a
Written by: ASPCode.net
Submitted date: 2000-03-02 |
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So, you have spent X hours( or days ) implementing a certain
function ( lets say a recommend script ) at your website. You upload it,
test it and
see it's working. You feel great, don't you? Now, I bet, just the very
next day, you are very curious to see if it became the success you really
thought it would be. Now, how do you measure it?
What I will give you here is some simple ( so simple it's nearly
embarassing... ) functions
you can use to log just anything you'd like: How many visitors have used
the recommend service and which pages got recommended, how many have
clicked on a certain button - you name it.
First we will need a database, let's use an Access database for simplicity.
Create a table called LOGACTION and add four columns:
- id AutoNumber
- actionid text(50)
- description text(255)
- when datetime
The id is just an autonumbering field.
actionid will be used as an category specifier. Like 'recommend' or
'buttonclick'
description will be used as a more descriptive text, you could for example
add the actual page where the action took place ( using HTTP_REFERER ) or
whoch specific page was recommended etc
when is of course a timestamp
Next, create a file called logaction.asp
Edit it like this:
<![CDATA[<%
Public Sub LogAction ( sCategory, sText )
Dim oConn
Dim oRS
Set oConn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
oConn.Open "change-to-point-to-your-database"
Set oRS = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
oRS.Open "select * from logaction where id=-1 " ,oConn ,1,3
oRS.AddNew
oRS("actionid") = sCategory
oRS("description") = sText
oRS("when") = Now()
oRS.Update
oRS.Close
oConn.Close
End Sub
%>]]>
Now, all you have to do is include the file
<![CDATA[
<!--#include file="logaction.asp"-->
]]>
and call LogAction, for example in a sendmail.asp which is used for site
recommendation:
****
LogAction "recommend", sThePage
***
Reporting function: How can we see what actions has took place?
Create a file called view.asp and edit it like this:
<![CDATA[<html>
<head>
<title>Action viewer</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="33%"><a href="view.asp?sort=actionid">Category</a></td>
<td width="33%"><a href="view.asp?sort=description">Text</a></td>
<td width="34%"><a href="view.asp?sort=when+desc">When</a></td>
</tr>
<%
Dim oConn
Dim oRS
Dim strSort
strSort = "when"
If Request.QueryString("sort") <> "" Then
strSort = Request.QueryString("sort")
End If
Set oConn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
oConn.Open "change-to-point-to-your-database"
Set oRS = oConn.Execute("select * from logaction order by " & strSort )
While Not oRS.EOF
%>
<tr>
<td width="33%"><%=oRS("actionid")%></td>
<td width="33%"><%=oRS("description")%></td>
<td width="34%"><%=oRS("when")%></td>
</tr>
<%
oRS.MoveNext
Wend
%>
</table>
</body>
</html>]]>
Now we have a simple report function which you also let you sort by date,
action etc.
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