>The sites I am running analog reports for validate members and put their user
>names in the basic authentication field of the log file. People can freely
>visit our site and only certain portions require a log in. This is usually
>visible as a "members area" to outsiders but actually offers the core of our
>content and functionality and all of the features we're delivering. Registered
>users are bounced to a unique URL. This deals with accessibility, as users can
>visit as much as they like before going through the forms to register, and
>bouncing deals with the cache problem.
If you're already generating unique URLs, then the code that generates these
URLs should be doing the tracking for you.
The basic issue is that standard web logs can not be relied upon to
provide reliable "session" information, for a whole host of reasons, not
least of which is that different users will have very different
environments, and it's a mistake to assume that a generic tool can take
account of these differences - a site with a lot of corporate users
coming through firewalls/proxy server will have a different set of
issues than a site with a lot of home users dialing in to various ISPs,
and there will be a different set of issues again for high bandwidth
sites targetted at the cable network audience.
If you come up with a definition for the term "session" that satisfies
your needs, you can come up with session counts fairly easily - but you
can also be very certain that your definition won't find widespread
acceptance, because other people are working under different
constraints. In your case, your session is defined by a unique URL that
you bounce each user to - this isn't an option for most other sites.
>Alejandro Fernandez,
Aengus
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