Interpreting the Views counter

[Chris Dee]

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.

[Steffen]

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.

[Chris Dee]

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.

[Steffen]

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.

[Chris Dee]

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

[Tim Gould]

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