Site Logging

[stlewis]

Like, I guess, many semi-pro sites, I have to name pages as .shtm or .shtml to call CGI scripts directly. At the moment I operate my log by calling a log.shtml file from each .htm page; this file then fires the log script. The downside is that I don't know the real 'from' page - all my log entries are from the calling page and to the log.shtml page.

What are people's views on renaming all pages to .shtml to get more useful logging?

And, how can I derive the country of the user? Is this normally done from the .com, .uk etc of the user? Or is there something else I can do?

Many thanks.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[Jen Worden]

Hi Simon ...

Okay, I assume you are using Server Side Includes, thereby needing to change your HTML pages to .shtml.

Because the HTTP server has to scan for the SSI in the SHTML pages, I would think naming all of your non-SSI pages (.shtml) would defeat the purpose as well as being a really slow load.

RE: country and logs - you are pretty much limited to the country codes on a first look. You can of course do searches for all the .com/IP numbers if country of origin is really of concern to you.

Alternatively, why not use a membership/cookie combo if you really need to feed particular pages to visitors?

Good luck!

cfn ... Jen
Jen Worden
Web Developer
www.meadoworks.com

[stlewis]

On SSI, yes you are right. And I can see that it would hit loading if the server has then to look at every page - even though they would all be pointing to the same piece of Perl. I'll just have to make do with the information I'm getting.

On domain numbering, I have built a Microsoft Access database to manipulate my logs - I download them - and a lot of visitors only give me a numeric address. As I am interested in the % of UK users, I wanted to try and decipher the numeric ones - but my hope about one element being 'country' does not appear to be met.

Thanks...

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk