Bestdam Website Visitor Logger
+ Hit Counter

Getting  Fancy

Dual Setup

On a couple of my Websites I have two copies of Bestdam Logger running. One monitors just the site's "home" page. The second copy monitors all of the sub-pages. Why ?

I can:

• have a hit counter displayed on the site's home page and maintain a cumulative count for the site (as well as log data for just that page)
  
  
• not have hit counters displayed on all the sub-pages but still collect "period" hit count totals and log information for those pages and get a second e-mail report for them

This allows me to more easily monitor the popularity of the various sub-pages, as well as determine whether the hits came from the home page or possibly from a search engine. Note that the Lite Edition of Bestdam Logger doesn't include the ability to use the   $reset_counts   option so you'll need to have the Deluxe Edition in order to do this.

Here's how to set it up:

1. Create two folders under CGI-BIN. You can give them names like bdlhome and bdlsubs if you wish to keep them straight but any names will do. Just make sure the names in the SSI tags match the folder names.
   
   
2. Set the options for the copy going into the bdlhome folder as follows:
   
   
   • $display_count = 1     (this is the default)
     
     
   • $reset_counts = 0     (this is the default)
     
     
   • add the following tag to your home page:
     
     <!-- #exec cgi="/cgi-bin/bdlhome/bdlogger.pl" -->
   
   
   
3. Set the options for the copy going into the bdlsubs folder as follows:
   
   
   • $display_count = 0
     
     
   • $reset_counts = 1
     
     
   • if you have the Web page options enabled be sure to specify different file names in the Web page path variables, using file names like
     • subhits.htm
     • subpreport.htm
     
     
   • add the following tag to all of your sub-pages:
     
     <!-- #exec cgi="/cgi-bin/bdlsubs/bdlogger.pl" -->
   
   
   Be sure not to enable IP tracking in this subs copy of the script or counts for your sub-pages won't be accurate.

This way you'll get two reports e-mailed to you. One for the home page with the on-going site hit count, and a second one with the hit counts on all of the sub-pages for the period (day or week) you have selected.