SummitPost.org

Do the hits on any given page track page views from non-members of Summitpost? If not, wouldn't it be good to track hits from the general public, like used to be the case on Summitpost?

Regards

Yes, non member hits are counted too.

Scott,

I would test it. My hits have gone down significantly I noticed. I just signed off, and was checking my newest page, which I posted on Facebook for my friends to see. I added 0 hits. It appears hits are no longer counted from those who haven't signed in.

The hit counter is definitely not working. I posted a new page: http://www.summitpost.org/silver-peak-west-peak/945869

I posted it on Facebook for my friends, and gained basically no new hits. I signed off and clicked on the page - no new hits. I went on my work cell phone where I wasn't signed in - clicked on the page a few times - no hits.

I signed in and clicked on other people's pages, and added hits. Then I signed off and clicked on other people's pages. No new hits.

Clearly, hits aren't tracked unless the hits come from an existing member.

I posted it on Facebook for my friends, and gained basically no new hits. I signed off and clicked on the page - no new hits. I went on my work cell phone where I wasn't signed in - clicked on the page a few times - no hits.

Weird. I just tried it on your page and it seems that you are correct.

I know one glitch is that non-members re always a day behind when they view pages. For example, if you add a new page, a non member will only see the original version until the next day. The change was made when someone hacked into SP and deleted several members. Now, it is all archived every 24 hours, so that cannot happen. I wonder if the change caused the glitch with the hits you are pointing out.

Unfortunately, I have little technical knowledge about hits and I have no access to the innards of SP. Hopefully Matt sees this and can fix it.

Thanks Scott. Who is Matt? I can contact him if would like.

Thanks Matt,

I think it is silly to no longer count the vast majority of page views on Summitpost.

Seems like there are options out there, like Joomla Cache. I think it is really a decision that has to be made on Summitpost. Is tracking the traffic to Summitpost important? Does it help with advertisers to know just how popular the site is?

My Mount Rose page used to get 100 hits a day during the summer. Internally, it gets about 10 hits a day. If you cannot solve the problem though, you might want to figure out how this impacts advertising.

You have to keep in mind the idea that SP may be getting less viewership. As I understand it guest viewers still count. I can however test this and check back in 24 hours.

@Scott: It is not a glitch and is not really a security measurement. Those incidents had nothing to do with each other.

Thanks Josh,

What is a "guest viewer"? Is that somebody who goes directly to Summitpost.org and starts looking up mountains? If so, I did some research myself. I went directly to the site, not logged in, and started clicking on pages. I didn't add any hits. So this is bigger than just web-searches.

Also, I doubt SP viewership is down 50-75% from a year ago? That is the kind of drop I am noticing.

I don't think SP counts hits from the IP address that created the object, regardless if you are logged in or not. In other words, it doesn't count when you view your own objects.

Alpinist - good point. I logged in with a phone to check my own objects. I don't think I used that phone to log in to SP before. But, if I am logged out and click on other people's objects, the hit counter does not increase. At this time, SP doesn't count hits from non-members either. I just logged out and clicked on one of your pages and no hits were added. But then I signed in, and added hits.

If somebody not a member of SP does a Google search for a mountain and they go to Summitpost, their hits don't count. Thousands of hits to thousands of pages go unrecorded. We are a very popular site, but no longer track outside hits, which appear to represent 75% to 90% of traffic to Summitpost depending on the page. For more popular pages, I think it is closer to 90% or more is non-members. Some of the more obscure pages, closer to 75%.

So it would mean that if a page shows a few thousand hits, all hits were generated by logged SPers??? That’s really misrepresenting the popularity of a page and therefore its “value”, especially if some pages (articles) are written for general public. In other words, if an author of the page sees insufficient nr of hits, he/she may be discouraged to write another one. Hits = reword/satisfaction.

I think this should be fixed for benefits of SPers who participate in creating pages here. How about, for instance, using Ajax and JS window.onload to connect to the database (this should be cache independent)?

Personally, I would like to see all the hits counted. I have not created many pages, but I like to see if they are being looked at or not, especially for the more obscure mountains.

Matt,

Are you saying you won't count page hits anymore at all, even from within SP? I think I understand your point that the Cache works better, and traffic is strong. As long as the advertisers don't care about hits, then neither should you. I just want to promote SP and send more traffic to the site.

One question is this - if advertisers don't use hit counters, then how do they measure site traffic to know it is a good investment to advertise on Summitpost?