I recently finished an ucreditted course in HTML Design Simplified, and I now have my own website. ( users.aol.com/f1002890 ) It's still a little rough around the edges, and I'm still figuring out how to manipulate the codes.
Anyhoo, I've asked a few people for some input, and so far all I've gotten are a few "I'm impressed!" comments, but no real critiques.
So, over the past month, I've come to understand why a lot of websites have those hit counters.
I was wondering if anyone could recomend a good web hit counter that's okay for somebody who's still learning the language?
The 'on-page' hit counters are either (a) horribly inaccurate or (b) overly complicated code. If you want better knowledge about who/what/how often, etc, is visiting your site you need a log analyzer running on the site's server.
The one I use for all the sites I have done and recommend to other site designers (and even hosts) is Webalizer (http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/) (which assumes you'll be running the site on a Linux host). Noting that you are currently running your site on AOL, you may not have such an option and may be stuck with an on-page 'hit' counter (which is a misnomer). I don't know what options AOL gives you. If they don't provide you with site stats (all hosts should provide this), get your site on a host that does.
That said, if you still want to use an on-page 'hit' counter, try Google. Most are going to be some sort of javascript, but you should be able to find one that you can cut and paste into your page.
The easiest way to get one of those free one's where you just copy and paste the code into your page. The one on my page specomm.0catch.com (http://specomm.0catch.com) is from Bravenet.
Do you have to use an AOL page builder or do they allow you make your pages on your own and upload them. There are quite a few simple to use html editors out there (click on the spider on my page to see the one I use). Check out http://www.thefreesite.com/ (http://www.thefreesite.com/), they have links to a lot of free web page goodies.
I use hit counters from Rapid Counters (http://www.rapidcounter.com/), as they are simple to install and come in a variety of shapes and colors to compliment your website. They are, however, only going to measure hits to the page upon which you have them placed, and nothing else. I just use them as an indicator as I have over 20 websites and do not want to fool with statistics for every one of them.
A way to measure unique hits to your page, and get a little traffic while you are at it, is through the use of a topsites list, and I recommend T-Y-F Topsites (http://toplist.tell-your-friends.com/index.php) as they are a little more accurate than most others, and they do get traffic. They provide you with a code to insert into your page, which will place a 88x31 button on your page where you place the code.
Both methods are susceptible to error, especially when dealing with url forwarding frames, which they have a tendency to count as one hit regarless of how many hits came through it. Of course, if you do not have your link on other sites which use such devices, then you do not have to worry about that.
I will look around on a webmaster forum I frequent, as one member on there used to recommend a free counter whole-heartedly, which others would thank him for it after using it.
For free web design goodies, you can go to my portal (link is in my sig) and click on the webmaster resources section. You can also go to my site here (http://phamboti.atspace.com/dsite/page.html) which has lots of free resources for webmasters. I put together a list of free search engine submission resources for one of my forums, and I will post it here for anybody who may find it useful in promoting their website.
I checked out that counter which I mentioned had been highly recommended on a webmaster forum, and it is StatCounter (http://www.statcounter.com/).
A service like that is okay, I guess, but the problem I have against stuff like that is consumption of resources on the 'Net. It might seem small, but it adds up. DNS queries and bandwidth are consumables, after all.
The question I have is why send a piece of information to some other site to log the data for you, when the host machine is already logging the info?
Many hosting providers give access to the log data, either in raw form or already analyzed. I know that we do (all sites on our servers have access to Webalizer).
Just a thought.
Not everybody has paid hosting. All of my sites are on free hosting (try paying for more than 10 different hosting services, and I don't host more than 3 sites with a provider to prevent all of my sites from being down should the service be down). Many of these providers will not allow access to log files for security reasons, and those who do allow MySQL databases lock out certain functions, and we won't even mention HTA access. Some providers do provide traffic info to subcribers, but they are in the minority. Many of those who use free hosting, and even some paid hosting, have to rely on external services, such as web counters, to provide features which may be missing from their service.
trek_geezer Wrote:
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>
> Do you have to use an AOL page builder or do they
> allow you make your pages on your own and upload
> them.
I created my page with Windows NotePad. I actually didn't know about AOL Page Builder until I uploaded my completed HTML files to AOL HomeTown. Of course, I didn't find out until afterwards, when I went back & tried to iron out a few wrinkles, that I couldn't edit it online unless I had used AOL Page Builder, so I had to delete the existing pages & upload new ones.
My intsructer only showed us how to design web pages, but didn't cover how to start our own sites. It was a little bit disapointing, but their were a couple of who'd been using FrontPage & DreamWeaver that were way more disapointed when they found out they were going to have to type out all these codes from scratch in notepad.
Anyway, thanks everybody for all the advice!
It's a big help.
I have a question to ask you Ulthar.
I have a site hosted as a sub-domain at present, and registered a domain for it. It is presently hosted with a free server, and I have been happy with the service and, after having heavily promoted it, am not in the mood to move it to a domain at this time. I am considering using my registrars url forwarding service (included free with my registration) to forward the domain url to my site. I was wondering if this could possibly have a negative affect on my listings with the search engines.
Many of these providers will not allow access to log files for security reasons
Right. But they SHOULD provide a tool that gives you the info in your logs. Er, wait. Free hosting. You get what you pay for.
We (by we, I mean the hosting company that I do consulting for) don't give hosting clients direct access to the logs; technically, any that want to ftp into their site (some use CCC's web designers to do all site maintenance) have a shell account on their server, but none that I know of ever use it. Even if they did log on, they would not have the permissions to access the log directories directly (that would be a MAJOR security no-no).
But, as part of setting up their site on the server, we set up webalizer for them. They get full blown stats from the logs via pointing their browser to the url we give them.
Keep in mind, too, we are not hosting personal sites, but businesses.
If I understand you correctly, you want to do something like making the url
www.mysite1.com
point to
www.mysite2.com/mysite1
right?
I've read that Google does not like this at all. They may actually drop the site from the index as opposed to just giving you a low ranking.
Can you simply ask the hosting provider to set you up a virtual host with the correct Server Name and the Document Root pointing to the directory your mysite1 files are currently in? They might do it (perhaps for a one-time admin fee). It would be dirt-simple, if they are running Apache on Linux.
Menard Wrote:
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> For free web design goodies, you can go to my
> portal (link is in my sig) and click on the
> webmaster resources section.
>
> Doctor Menard's Portal o' Doom
> Hot Blooded Video Vixens
>
> Captain Obvious,,,,,,to the rescuuuuuuuuuue!!!
How exactly do you guys insert links into your signatures?
I just tried it, but all I got was the html code that I typed in.
You cannot use html code on this (and many other) bbs. You have to use 'bbs' code.
This site has examples (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:BEELn4c9s0UJ:www.cuyamaca.net/Christine.Clark/spring/Imports/BBSinstructions.pdf+bbs+codes&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5)
Keep in mind that not all boards support all bbs codes; usually, the basics like url, bold, italics and images are supported.
ulthar Wrote:
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> Can you simply ask the hosting provider to set you
> up a virtual host with the correct Server Name and
> the Document Root pointing to the directory your
> mysite1 files are currently in? They might do it
> (perhaps for a one-time admin fee). It would be
> dirt-simple, if they are running Apache on Linux.
I was essentially going to ask the provider to do that, but the email address they have provided for support does not work. I have tried variations on the email address as well (support@, admin@) with no luck. Their host environment is Linux.
Menard, if you are hosting as many sites as you have, would you not find it easier to regain total control and host them yourself? What's your total traffic volume? If it is not too terribly high (say in the thousands of hits per day range), you can run a set of sites off a decent broadband connection.
But, back to the question. Have you checked the Whois (http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp) record for their domain, and looked for a tech or admin contact? Sometimes that works.
ulthar Wrote:
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> Menard, if you are hosting as many sites as you
> have, would you not find it easier to regain total
> control and host them yourself? What's your total
> traffic volume? If it is not too terribly high
> (say in the thousands of hits per day range), you
> can run a set of sites off a decent broadband
> connection.
Anything which involves expense is not is in my non-existent budget at this time. I do not have my own server (well, I have an old pentium 2 server) and cannot afford broadband at this time; plus, as I mentioned about having multiple hosts, I would prefer to spread them out rather than dedicate them to one server in the event of server outage.
Most of my sites are in the low hits categories, single digits per day, with the exception of some forums and adult sites; with which I am hoping to build up some supplemental income to hopefully pay for hosting for my more traffic heavy sites (Hot Blooded has only been up something like six weeks and is close to getting 100 hits a day, and rising).
I do have some of my own domains as well.
> But, back to the question. Have you checked the
> Whois record for their domain, and looked for a
> tech or admin contact? Sometimes that works.
I did that already, with no luck. I did find out that they have Tucows listed as a registrar; perhaps I can try to get a hold of someone at Tucows and see if they can provide any info.