in reply to Re: Re: viewer eyeball counter?
in thread viewer eyeball counter?

Well, I guess I could have put in the standard disclaimer about how none of this makes sense if you're dealing with client IP addresses that change (which they will for anyone behind an AOL firewall), session IDs that change, multiple servers (in which case you have to merge the log files then do your parsing), and so forth. But I presented my (simple) solution based on the trivial situation: stable IPs, a single server, no weirdness with the URL changing.

I'm guessing (or hoping, anyway) that anyone in a non-trivial situation is going to know about how to work around their situation to get the right answers.

--t. alex
Life is short: get busy!

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Re: Re: Re: Re: viewer eyeball counter?
by waswas-fng (Curate) on Dec 08, 2003 at 23:26 UTC
    check out how awstats does it. the algorithm is basically, for the maximum duration of inactivity in seconds that is considered a end of session look at each source IP and if the next hit is within that range the visit duration is increased by the difference in timestamps, if it is longer than the timeout it is a new session and the duration is reset with that hits timestamp setting the start point. Again, I have to reiterate that without true session accounting these duration stats will be suspect at best even with a simple site -- you are making guesses about inactivity vs sessions. If these numbers mean something to you even after that realization kudos.


    -Waswas