Re: Tracking Page File Downloads

Caryl,

Yes, there are ways to get this information.  In particular, your web server
probably keeps a record of every time any file is accessed in a 'web acess
log'.  There are programs available to crunch these logs and provide you
with the information you need.  Two I can think of are LiveStats by
MediaHouse, and WebTrends. The downside is that not only do these programs
cost money, but they have to be installed on your web server, probably by
your host admin.

The free programs, and most programs that collect web traffic data from
another site, generally work by having you install a little javascript on
each page that sends information back to their tracking program whenever
somebody loads the page, which they then accumulate in a file and analyze
for you. These solutions wouldn't be too suited for this task, because there
is no HTML page to load the little javascript onto.

Another alternative would be to set up a script of your own which would be
triggered by the onClick attribute of the link that people have to click on
to initiate the download.  I believe it would have to be a server-side
script (like cgi, perl, PHP or ASP)  in order to write information  to a
file on your host server.

If you can't get your web host to install a web traffic analysis program, or
give you access to the server-access logs for your site, then I would pursue
the scripting option by whatever script language your host supports.

Hope this helps,
Kim



----- Original Message -----
From: "C. A. Milton" <camilton(at)hauntedhalloweencastle.com>
To: <hwg-basics(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 11:44 PM
Subject: Tracking Page File Downloads


> I posted this once but received no feedback.  Does anyone know of a stats
> tracker that tells you the number of times site visitors download files
you
> have made available (zip, exe, etc)?
>
> My page host does not provide this information,  but I really need a way
to
> tell which downloads are most popular.  Originally I was interested in
> _free_ stats trackers; now I'm interested in all . . . even if there's a
fee
> involved.
>
> TIA,
>
> Caryl Milton
>

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