Chris Earle ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> Hmmm...........that didn't really answer the question, it just told me a
> bunch of other things that can't be done............all I want to do is
> define what a "repeat visitor" is and how to detect that............it
> should be able to be done, even if it's approximations........
HTTP is stateless, so you can't determine visitor counts, much less
unique (repeat) visitors. You can only estimate it. Analog does not
provide any (simple) means of doing this as Stephen's goal is to
provide accurate analyses, not guesses.
The only way I know of to produce repeat visitor counting is with
'persistent' cookies -- that is, cookies with an expiration date well
in the future. This is, of course, prone to all the problems of
proxies, multiple users of a single browser / computer, users who
don't want cookies (or don't want your cookies) and such that you have
already read about.
If you can configure your web server / web site to generate these
cookies and add them to your log file, you can customize Analog to
read it (using LOGFORMAT command). If you aren't using authorized
users (%u) or virtual hosts (%v ), you can 'hijack' one of these
variables in your LOGFORMAT, and use it to count the 'unique visitor'
cookies. Then use the User or Virtual Host report to get a complete
count (and list of top 'visitors' if such has any relevance to you).
--
Jeremy Wadsack
Wadsack-Allen Digital Group
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
| This is the analog-help mailing list. To unsubscribe from this
| mailing list, go to
| http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/unsubscribe.html
|
| List archives are available at
| http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
| http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/archives/
| http://www.tallylist.com/archives/index.cfm/mlist.7
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
