OK, I set referrers.processing.enabled to false by default. Thankfully,
Roller was already coded to hide the Referral tab if referral processing
is shut off, and I don't need to move the hit count reset button from
the referral to the maintenance tab as that is just for referral hit
counts (referrer table) and not the daily hits (roller_hitcounts table)
used by the template macros. AFAICT we're done here.
Glen
On 08/30/2013 06:56 AM, Glen Mazza wrote:
On 08/29/2013 02:14 PM, Glen Mazza wrote:
As a compromise, perhaps we can keep the background processes
collecting the referrals (so they can be used in themes as Dave
mentions), but, in my view, that referral tab needs to go until it is
something that does not look substantially worse than Wordpress' or
GA's offerings. I still don't see the need to reproduce Google
Analytics within Roller however--the fact that some people dislike
Google can be met by having people linking in other third party
referral tools. Again, in its present state, those who really care
about referrals will not be looking at that tab anyway, they'll be
using GA or one of its competitors.
Actually, I can compromise even further--How about we shut off
referral tracking by default (referrers.processing.enabled in
roller.properties moves from "true" to "false" OOTB) with the
referrals tab not showing if the referrers.processing.enabled is set
to false (only appears if it is set to true). The hit counter reset
button will move to the maintenance tab so it's always available. And
in the Install and/or User Guide we note the "proof of concept" level
of the referrals tab (it's just there to show that Roller has in-house
tracking if desired) and recommend 3rd party tracking tools if serious
link analysis is desired. How does that sound?
Glen
Regards,
Glen
Mvgr,
Martin
2013/8/27 Glen Mazza <[email protected]>:
Hi Team, Roller trunk still maintains a "Referrers" page for each blog
created, which gives a list of external sites which had someone
click on a
link taking the person to the Roller blog. This list is maintained
for 24
hours only, resetting to zero at the end of each day. This
information is
populated from a database table and a background process that
writes all
incoming referrers to that table.
Nowadays people who are interested in that information use free Google
Analytics, which is soooooo much better (stores data for months for
free),
and I see no reason for us to reinvent the wheel by trying to
duplicate
their service. Those who don't care about this information won't
be on
Google Analytics, but they won't be caring about that Referrer page
either,
so that page really isn't helping anyone today.
So I'd like to pull out the Referrer page and move the unrelated
Blog Hit
reset button on that page to the Maintenance page. Also, remove the
background process and related classes involved with writing to the
referrer
table, and update the User Guide mentioning Google Analytics. We
won't have
a referrer table anymore in 5.1, and the 5.0-to-5.1 migration
script will
just ignore the 5.0 referrer table, so it will sit dormant in 5.1
installations. By removing the SQL processes related to storing the
referrers, it will help speed up Roller while reducing database
space and
memory needs, making it easier and cheaper to deploy on ISPs/PaaSs.
WDYT?
Regards,
Glen
