LDraw.org Discussion Forums

In forum pages like this, what does the Views count represent? Unique users or a cumulative count including repeat views by the same user? Is the count for a higher-level message incremented if you open the whole thread from the last message?

I'd prefer the former to get a feel for how many members are interested in a particular topic, even if they don't respond.

I would love to have a similar feature on the PT:

each time someone downloads a file from
http://www.ldraw.org/library/unofficial/...
, e.g.

http://www.ldraw.org/library/unofficial/...24co24.dat

, some count could go up.

This would be an indicator how badly an unofficial part is needed and probably should go official.

I'm not sure how that might be implemented, because the download link is just a URL to the .dat file on the server. There is no scripting in between.

each such access will produce a log line in the server's access_log file (assuming you run Apache)
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/log...#accesslog
this could be extracted nightly and put into some "popularity" table.

putting a counting script in between is not recommended,
as this would slow down downloads significantly, and produce load on the server.

Thanks - I'll see whether I have access to the logs.

Judging by my experience with topics in the hidden webmaster's forum (where I know who is around that can open the page_ it counts each time the page is loaded, regardless of who is loading it. Try a topic marked 'do not peek' in that forum and I'm sure Orion, Willy and I will be able to resist temptation for the purpose of testing.

Tim