How can i see how many people are viewing my site

[bigwood]

Hi,

I'm new to this as i only bought actinic 6 a week ago, i have uploaded the start of my site and have already had emails from two viewers.
i would like to add a counter but cannot find any reference to counters in the advanced guide.

can anyone tell me the easiest way to paste 3rd party code in.
or is there built in record keeping of hits.

Cheers
Kris

[james]

The best way of keeping track of visits to your site is to view your webstats, if you don't know where these are, you should contact your web hosting company who should be able to point you in the right direction.

I would recommend against using a counter on your site as it can have an adverse effect on the perceived professionalism of your site, and also shows your visitors as well as you how many visitors you are getting - information which you may wish to keep just to yourself.

If you still want a counter on your site, try taking a look at the CGI resource index which has links to lots of free counters, both text and graphical.

[bigwood]

Thanks James,
I actually have code for invisible counters that just show a small icon, what I really need to know is the best way to put one on each section page so I can see which section is being viewed the most.
I can then concentrate on improving that section.

[james]

Not knowing how your counter works, I'll assume this is the style of counter where you place some HTML code for something like an image to appear in an inconspicuous place on the page?

The easiest way to achieve this might be to place the necessary HTML code for the counter in the Act_Primary templates used by the sections you want to monitor.
javascript:smilie('')
smile

[bigwood]

Cheers James, it is a few lines of html code.
I will try putting it where you suggested and hopefully I won't bugger it up.

do i just paste it under the existing text in the template the same as you do with a normal html page?
Kris

[pinbrook]

you are better off using webstats.

your host should either provide you with a facility to veiw these online, or at the very least a log file that you can download and interogate

There will be more info in your logs...like search terms used to find your site, total number of visitors to the site, amount of time spent on site..

[bigwood]

My isp does show detailed webstats, unfortunatly my webspace is on a different ftp address to my cgi-bin, so my whole site is situated in the cgi-bin. and they do not supply webstats for this.

unless anyone knows if i can host actinic on via two different ftp address(with the same isp)
My isp does not seem to want to help me much, other than saying host the whole site in the cgi-bin.

If anyone has plusnet as an isp who have actinic setup in the webspace, please let me the details of how to do it.

Cheers
Kris

[Jane]

I host all my Actinic sites with www.scl.co.uk who have everything set up and ready, you just download a file from them and your up and running. Their hosting also provides web statistics which show you exactly where your customers are coming from, which pages they are viewing and search terms which helps you keep your site 'visible' with the search engines. I'm sure there are lots of other hosting companies who act as Actinic re-sellers, but I have found thier support brilliant.

Jane