### Board mmajunke.de ###

Hi,

I had setup the Visitor Counter on a website about three weeks back and removed the old extension which was reporting incorrectly. The new counter also seems to have issues which I am unable to explain to end user. The Total Visitor count for yesterday 23 Oct is 17 but the end user added two articles yesterday afternoon whose hit counter shows 59 hits since the article was published. There could be a minor timing gap between counter clock and Joomla timing (not sure if both of them use the same 24 hour cycle).

Can you kindly explain why the disparity? I am unable to explain it. If you need I can give you site's admin user/pass.

Regards
Amal

Hi Amal,

here you wrote about two different topics.

Starting with the Timing: the Counter use the time from database. The Timezone-Setting PHP/DB should be the same ( see also ). But I assume this is not the problem for the amount of visitors.

Is my followig understanding of the problem correct:
- the day before yesterday : 59 total visitors
- yesterday : 17 total visitors
?
This can't be

Or is it a misunderstanding by me and you mean ? :
- yesterday (morning ?) : 17 total
- yesterday afternoon : 59 total

This can be. Why not ?
The "counter" count visitors as new "if a locktime" is over (or per day). The default Mode is "Locktime" with 15min ( often this is tooo short, my setting is 45 min ). If you visit the page and make a Browser-Refresh, the counter should not increased within this time ( of course other vistors in parallel can cause an increment ). If the counter directly increase, then try to set "Behind Proxy = Yes" (be carefully!). You should also set "Use Cookies = Yes" if not already on "Yes".

Of course the counter also count "Bots" if it's not configured to filter it. "Autofilter Robots" should be set on "Yes". But this not contains all existing Bots and therefore you can/should add some additional of it ( in config or within a file ) ( see also Bot's und Robot's ).
( some Bots check each half hour my website )

Additional you can set the "User-Filter" to "Members" ( I use this ). With this you can filter members ( of course after first login ).

At least it is possible to have a look into the database to see "who" was on the page. Set the parameter "Store User-Agent" to "Yes". After a while the database table can be "checked".

A question related to the general configuration: there are one write- and one readonly- counter configured ?

Regards,
Michael

Michael,

Quick reply, your understanding is NOT what I was saying. I will explain again:
Visitor Counter for Yesterday = 17
Joomla article CREATED YESTERDAY (new article) Hit counter (as checked in Article Manager of Joomla) = 59

For same day how can an article have 59 hits but total visitor counter for the whole day is just 17. That is the question.

My Locktime is 60 minutes. I will answer your other questions after rechecking my configuration.

Thanks
Amal

Hi Amal,

ah.. so I completely misunderstand you

What you describe can be ok. I assume the Joomla-Page-Counter is a simple HIT-Counter. Each "hit" increase the value ( also F5, or back<->forward, ... ).

The counter is NOT a simple Hit-Counter ( it can be ) . The counter increase only after 60 minutes for same visitor, so it counts "unique" users ( what we mostly want ) and not simple hits.

Is it what you meant ?

Regards,
Micha

Michael,


Yes, that is exactly what I meant. You understood me perfectly. I still am not convinced that only 17 unique users and still 59 page hits. I understand what you are saying about unique visitors and plain page hits. Some people do stay on our website and refresh once in few hours. I still think there is too much difference.

Should I try to compare the "Visitor Counter" with Google Analytics figure also or maybe AWStats (CPanel visitor report) etc. My end user is not going to be convinced easily. Any other ways to verify 17 is correct. My end user says they have much higher number of visitors.

Amal

Hi Amal,

yes, compare with other tools can be a good thing for tuning the settings. I compared my counter-setting on my page with "Piwik" and it was 95% same ( I no longer use piwik, to much data ).

But.. I need to be sure about your configuration.
I forgot my question for you from above comment : " A question related to the general configuration: there are one write- and one readonly- counter configured ? "
Where you placed the counter modul which count the pages (write-counter) ? Within the footer which is shown on each page ?
Have in mind, the counter counts only if it is "executed / called". Therefore the write-counter-modul must shown (executed) on each page (there is no need that a view is activated on it).

Another test which you can do would be to create a counter-modul for the "issued page". You create a new counter-modul and set a new different table-name (!very important!) and let show this counter only within the page you need to count ( e.g. with {loadposition xx} ). So you can directly compare and try some settings with the joomla-hit-counter..
( e.g. so the DEMO-Counter-Page works , the Extenderd Demo Page are Counter-Views on it )

You can also make some screenshots of counter settings.. ( if this not help, we can also use the mentioned temp-account ).

Regards,
Michael

Michael,

Thanks for having a look. You are right I wanted $countYesterday$. I wrote $countToday$ by mistake. I have been a bit tied up last two-three days so couldn't answer your questions.

Did you get answer to Is the counter correctly placed on each page - were you able to check that. I will see if I can setup a counter for a page as you suggested - looks a bit complicated. Will I have to make any changes to your code. I assume not.


To answer your other query about why the count could be different with Yesterday - today will be changing, yesterday is the actual total for one day. And the counts I sent for article, 59 was for the whole day after the article was created. I again reiterate, the article was just one day old when we checked the count, so its "all time hits" were for just "yesterday".

Thanks
Amal

Hi Amal,

yes.. you have configured only one write-counter which also shown the "values". This counter is placed within the footer and so it should be executed each time.
I wondered why you not created a special counter-view (read-only-mode) for it which is show e.g. in case if the admin login into the frontend. But for now, I see no problem with the counter self. You can do some fine tuning, e.g. disable "Create table" - this avoids the "exist table check", which is not necessary after first call of counter. Also "Auto Filter Robots" should set on "Yes".

I also checked the Joomla-Page-Hit-Counter feature.. as I expeceted each page-visit/page-reload/view of article/.. increase the hit count. So, my short visit increased the amount of hits to "plus 5". The counter of course was not increased.

The creation of mentioned Test-Counter ( direct Page-Counter ) is quiet easy .. no code change is necessary of course. It works similar to creation counter-views for the write counter, with exception that you create new write-counters and set new/own data-table and "not existing module position" (loadpos).

Modul Creation:
---------------
- create new counter modul :
-- 1) joomla "new" ( or copy )
-- 2) or two if you want to test/compare "normal counter behavior" vs. "hit counter configuration" (locktime=0) on same article
- set own table name for it/ each of them :
-- 1) eg. vvistcount3042
-- 2) and/or for second hit-counter on same page vvisthit3042
- set the lock-times you need, e.g. :
-- 1) 60
-- 2) 0
- activate/deactiovate the views what you want to show: think only the counter-value is needed
- set Joomla Modul Position for the modul(s) to a none existing "name" : e.g same as table name :
-- 1) vvistcount3042
-- 2) vvisthit3042
- recheck whether the rights of the modul are ok ( all users, each page )

=> what happen:
with own/new table-name you configure the counter to create a new/own data-table and use this as "base". This is exclusive used by this counter modul.
Be aware: counter tables are never deleted automaticly. If you no longer need data within this tables, you have to drop this with e.g. phpmyadmin.

Update Article :
---------------
- add within the article which you want to count the following :
{loadposition counterPosName} , e.g {loadposition vvistcount3042} / {loadposition vvisthit3042}

( see also : Joomla-Docs )

Thats it

I can prepare this for you if you want

Regards,
Michael

PS.: you can also configure a szenario where is nothing shown within the article self, the counter only counts but no views are "on". But then you need to configure addtional counter-views to can see the counter-values. I assume this would be "to much" for now

Michael,

I changed the two things you asked me to change.
If there is anything else you want me to do, let me know. I am still trying to grasp what all you wrote. It would be great if you can prepare the article module. Give the table a generic name like "vVisitCountSingleArticle". The reason is that my client is creating multiple articles every day and then we can fit it on any article and check. I assume I just have to clean the table every time I put it into some article.


Still trying to understand how I can setup a Read Only counter in frontend. My client wants this but I wasn't sure how to do it. Do I have to create another module. If its not too much trouble please set it up. I will then understand how you did it.

I read the Joomla article you mentioned. I understand {loadposition}. Haven't used it much though.

Thanks for all your help.
Amal