Hi Eron,
Yes, traffic analysis is another nice reason to use this URL method. But it's still
tricky to get meaningful results, or can be depending on your content. BTW, this is
where the .htm[l] on the end comes in most handy. This is not WebTrends specific, but
a couple of things I've found useful are...
Put some kind of descriptive variable value right before the .htm part. Something
like this (using periods to separate the variable name from it's value in the URL):
server.com/index.cfm/fuseAction.showPage/pageName.AboutTheCompany.htm
However the sad fact is it's not always possible or practical to do this. The key ID
("AboutTheCompany" in the above example) in cases like this is usually an integer or
something equally cryptic, so that's not always helpful (though still quite useful
since one *can* track down popular pages with a little effort). One could make the
extra effort to also pass something descriptive on the URL for each request, besides
the numeric ID, but this could mean a lot of extra coding and upkeep.
Another thing I've seen work is that some log analyzers will pull the URL of each
unique "page" it finds, and gets the HTML title of the page, then uses that title for
the stats display (instead of the URL, or along with it). Not sure if WebTrends does
this or not... I think HitList does (or did). I know Mediahouse LiveStats doesn't do
this either. However this is a cool feature if you take care to title your pages
properly already, and are willing to use an analyzer that does this.
Now I'm not sure about IIS at all. Someone just mentioned that it doesn't log
anything after the index.cfm part... If thats the case then all the above is moot (and
I'd say that's very lame on IIS' part). I use WebSite and Apache and they both log
the full request. BTW, for those two servers (and others) the CGI variable name is
SCRIPT_NAME, and the SES URL technique works great with them.
Well, hope that was somewhat helpful :) I'd like to hear if anyone has a good
solution. I've shied away from having each request be logged by the CF/SQL code
mostly due to overhead (especially when using Access as the back end), but if you need
precise stats that's probably the way to go.
Cheers,
-Max
<snip>
>The question I have is: are then any techniques for
>getting webtrends to see search engine safe URLS as
>actual URLS. It would sure be great to find a way to
>get webtrends to give me more accurate information
>about my site. Any info or pointers would be
>appreciated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at
http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
