Referrals

[Strange_Will]

I think that much like the bot log, there should be a referral log, for when someone hits your site, you know where they came from, and what page they went directly to. I think this is an awesome feature. Help me know who is hotlinking to where (I'm getting a lot of what seems to be hotlinking, and I can't tell where)

[bfarber]

You can see this in your Apache logs already - this log would get quite huge quite quickly on most sites.

[Strange_Will]

You can see this in your Apache logs already - this log would get quite huge quite quickly on most sites.

If you're running apache, which I'm not, and checking logs on my server is a little bit of a... pain...

It would just be a simple system, how many counts are from blank referals (doesn't matter where, it's a blank referal), and then clicks from a referal to a certian page. As LONG as it's not internal (if the referal is from Forums, forget it)

Anyway, I think this can be implemented easily and efficiently, many sites have this set up already. Just use a slightly modified version of what the bot system does (my IPB forums have hardly been around and have gotten over 25,000 google hits, all logged... I would have way less external referals... and I run a small site, only 9000 threads. :P)


Maybe just be able to assign trackers to certain forums, turn them off and on, etc. Basically I just keep seeing users that suddenly appear in a thread, I'd like to know where they come from without digign through every OTHER bit of information I get of them.

[Antony]

I acctually agree this feature could be useful, but it should be a modification rather than a built in feature as most board owners won't use it and won't want to configure it.

[Strange_Will]

I acctually agree this feature could be useful, but it should be a modification rather than a built in feature as most board owners won't use it and won't want to configure it.

Of course at the same time, how many board owners care to log every bot visit? Yet thats a complicated and large bulky system ;)

[Strange_Will]

I acctually agree this feature could be useful, but it should be a modification rather than a built in feature as most board owners won't use it and won't want to configure it.

Well any ideas on if anyone is willing to make a mod :P

Or a component being as mods are messy with code edits ><


I still think it will be even CLEANER than the bot logs :P and will only log incomming hits, not hits bouncing from the same domain.

[bfarber]

The bot logs show you specific bots that are there - the reason the bots system is in place is so you can do certain things to make your site more appealing to spiders (i.e. maybe give them another skin that is more SEF, or maybe hide certain forums). Since you already have to track if it's a spider, there's no harm in logging it.

Now, logging every single referer (not from your domain) - I don't see this being either clean, or an extremely necessary feature. It could be neat, I agree, and it could be done, but it's not something that will be done for 2.2

[Antony]

That said, a hook to help log such refferals wouldn't be a bad idea at all.