Does anyone have any thoughts about this... is it a good idea? Should we do this?
Linus is the only one who can do the first part of this change, because he is the owner of the google analytics account. Regards, Dave On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:07 +0100, "Dave Thompson" <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Linus (+anyone else interested in google analytics), > > You may have noticed with my recent commits that I've been experimenting > with the google analytics settings. In short, I think I have found a > way that we can collect download statistics in the same place, > contributing to the same totals, whether they are downloaded from a page > on argouml.tigris.org or argouml-downloads.tigris.org. > > Firstly, a bit of the background. At the moment, the download > statistics are collected in the same profile for both subdomains, and > the tracking code by default makes the assumption that any > _TrackPageView() calls are relative to the base subdomain of the page > they are linking from. This means that when a user downloads argouml > from: > > http://argouml.tigris.org/index.html, it registers a hit to > http://argouml.tigris.org/DOWNLOADS/ArgoUML-0.28-setup.exe > > and when they download from: > > http://argouml-downloads.tigris.org/nonav/argouml-0.28/index.html it > registers a hit to > http://argouml-downloads.tigris.org/DOWNLOADS/ArgoUML-0.28-setup.exe > > You probably already knew this. > > > Anyway, what I've tried doing is: > * Swapping over to the ga.js script (was of urchin.js) (made the change, > and used it for the rest of the tests). > * Tried specifying the full URL of the domain and download link on the > _TrackPageView() methods (resulted in an extra-long link hit being > logged, e.g. > http://argouml.tigris.orghttp://argouml-downloads.tigris.org/DOWNLOADS/ArgoUML-0.28-setup.exe). > * Used the pageTracker._setDomainName() method to set the domain name on > a argouml.tigris.org page to argouml-downloads.tigris.org (did not work) > * Used the pageTracker._setDomainName() method to set the domain name on > a argouml-downloads.tigris.org page to argouml.tigris.org (did not work) > * Used the pageTracker._setDomainName() method to set the domain name on > a argouml.tigris.org page to tigris.org (did not work) > * I did all of this on dummy pages > (http://argouml.tigris.org/index2.html, and > http://argouml-downloads.tigris.org/nonav/argouml-0.28/index2.html). > * I changed the text of the _TrackPageView() argument slightly each time > so that I could tell the difference between different tests that I had > done. > > All of this was quite slow to work through, because one has to wait 24 > hours before the google reports are regenerated after making any change. > > I followed the instructions on > http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55524, and > I was hoping that by specifying the domain in the setDomainName() > method, it would remove the first part of the domain name, and links > from different subdomains would be tracked together. Unfortunately, > this did not work. I did notice that the above page says near the top, > "The instructions below assume that this profile was set up with the > primary domain as the listed website (e.g. sample.co.uk) ". With this > in mind, I tried setting up an experimental google analytics tracking > profile [UA-8393544-2] which was totally separate to the original > tracking profile. In this profile, I set up the Website URL to > http://tigris.org, (i.e. without any subdomain referenced). Then, in > the index2,html file, i used the setDomainName(".tigris.org") as > instructed. With this done, the new tracking profile tracked downloads > of /DOWNtest10LOAD/ArgoUML-0.28-setup.exe, without referring to any > subdomain. > > This seemed to work the same, whether I used > _setDomainName(".tigris.org") or not. > > So my conclusion is that the most flexible option is to set up the main > analytics account 'Website URL' to http://tigris.org. My suggestion is > that we make this change. That way we can choose whether or not to > track subdomains separately or together, and we will (by default) > combine the tracking of downloads from argouml.tigris.org and > argouml-downloads.tigris.org. If we want to track subdomains separately > (an obvious example I can think of is to track each of the sub-projects' > index.html, pages separately), we can do this by specifying the > subdomain on these pages using _setDomainName(). > > Linus: What do you think about this suggestion? > > In case anyone else is reading this and wondering, none of this affects > the appearance or URLs of any of the pages from a user point of view, it > only affects what is displayed in the google analytics. > > This was my first ever look at google analytics, so if anyone has any > comments, particularly if you've any more experience of this, please > reply back! All feedback is welcome. > > Regards, > > Dave > > ------------------------------------------------------ > http://argouml.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=450&dsMessageId=1810022 > > To unsubscribe from this discussion, e-mail: > [[email protected]]. > To be allowed to post to the list contact the mailing list moderator, > email: [[email protected]] ------------------------------------------------------ http://argouml.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=450&dsMessageId=2012579 To unsubscribe from this discussion, e-mail: [[email protected]]. To be allowed to post to the list contact the mailing list moderator, email: [[email protected]]
