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- drathbun
- Flag Newbie
Offline - Registered: January 12, 2012
- Posts: 7
Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
I've had a flag counter on a fairly busy site that I manage for a while now. Lately I have noticed that during the busy times for my site, typically the morning hours from 8am to 11am central time zone, USA, my flag counter rarely fully renders on the page. What I mean by this is my page loads, and all of the content is there, but the browser is still "spinning" showing page activity and ultimately the flags will eventually come in if I wait long enough. The thing is, often I don't wait, and I move on to the next page before the flag loads completely. I'm not unique in this behavior. (I'm on s07 if it matters.) I've been thinking that this is probably impacting my flag statistics since if the flag image doesn't render, I'm assuming the page view doesn't count.
Well, today I opened up urchin (the web stats package on my server) and checked the average page views for the month of April. The page view stats here say that my 30 day average for page views is only 28,000. Urchin says for April I have 135,000 page views daily, over 100,000 page views that are not being acknowledged here. That's a lot of page views (and therefore potential flags) that are going uncounted. [Edit] I checked, and my flag counter started Oct 16, 2010. From that point to today the flag counter stats say my flag counter has been viewed 18MM times. With urchin I got a total page views from my domain for the same time frame and the number is over 100MM. The ratio seems to remain the same, meaning only about 20% of my views are being recorded. [/Edit]
My site is running phpBB and my flag counter is in the overall footer, so it should appear on every single page. Since the difference in page views is so substantial, I really believe that my flag counter is nowhere near calculating the true visitor count (and therefore flags) for my site.
I am guessing that upgrading to a pro account won't fix this, right? Does anyone else compare the flag stats with local server collected stats and see this much of a discrepancy, specifically on a very active site?
I enjoy seeing the flags, especially when a new flag pops up, but my page load times are being impacted by the flag lag and if I'm only collecting 20% of the data anyway, I will probably just drop the flags from this site. Thanks for any input or suggestions that you might have.
Last edited by drathbun (May 2, 2012 7:11 pm)
- jimctu
- Flag Enthusiast
Offline
- From: Brazil - Minas Gerais
- Registered: August 27, 2010
- Posts: 689
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
flag counter only counts the new visitors, so you have to see that if these 135k of visits are new visitors.
Flag counter stores a cookie on the pc, so until the person clean his cookies or the cookie expires it will not be counted as a new visitor. On your FC visit chart you have New Visitors and Flag Counter Views.
Only the new visitors will be counted as a new flag.
my ratio is about 40%, so only about 40% of my visitors are turned into a new flag.
Upgrading to pro will not solve this, btw.
Countries: 250 Total Flags: 1974
- LeoE
- Flag Collector
Offline
- Registered: April 10, 2012
- Posts: 191
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
drathbun wrote:
I have 135,000 page views daily.
Wow!!!
What's the address of this site?
.
nobody is perfect but i'm pretty close
see here -> epstein.de
- LondonBobTog
- Flag Collector
Offline
- From: London, England, UK
- Registered: January 23, 2012
- Posts: 318
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
If it helps (and it probably won't)!!!! My total views are 125,000 but my unique visitors are just 52,000 - so about 40%. I know my site is clearly damn insignificant if you're getting that level of interest - but the stats aren't too dissimilar!
LBT
- drathbun
- Flag Newbie
Offline
- Registered: January 12, 2012
- Posts: 7
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
I'm not talking about "New Visitors" I'm talking about Flag Counter Views. I know the difference. I don't track "new unique visitors" via Urchin, but I do track page views. In the flag stats page they provide new uniques as well as flag counter views, I'm comparing the flag views to page views. If the flag views are also unique to a user (by day, or some other time period?) then I would appreciate a confirmation from someone who can confirm that.
And excuse me for writing up a thorough explanation of my question, as I was looking for help, not denigration and obscenities. If you can't be helpful, then why bother posting?
Nice site here, if that's the sort of attitude that is allowed.
- •
Thread Starter- jimctu
- Flag Enthusiast
Offline
- From: Brazil - Minas Gerais
- Registered: August 27, 2010
- Posts: 689
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
trying to answer your question, if a user see your flag counter 3 times, it will count 3 page views but only 1 flag. So if your Urchin status says that there were 100k pageviews, then, your flag counter should have
shown 100k pageviews. I can think only two reasons why this is not happening.
the first is that the FC image is not being loaded (as you already said). I don't know how urchin works, but your page probably have different pages, so I dont know if urchin counts a view from each page. I mean, if I go to your site, counts 1 visit. I click on a link to another page inside your site, counts another visit.
to fc works this way, you have to place it on every page of your site.
Countries: 250 Total Flags: 1974
- Jeremy
- Administrator
Offline
- From: United States
- Registered: August 30, 2009
- Posts: 2,774
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
Lorelei,
Please see the forum rules and consider this one of your last warnings. That is not an acceptable posting at all.
Drathbun,
Pageviews counts the number of times the image is loaded from our server. It is not unique at all. For such a huge discrepancy, I find it unlikely that your other statistics are counting the same thing. Are you certain your counter is on every page? Our servers, and particularly s07 are usually very reliable. If you could post or send me a message with your website I may be able to see if I can see any issues.
Flag Counter Developer
Boardhost.com, Inc.
- drathbun
- Flag Newbie
Offline
- Registered: January 12, 2012
- Posts: 7
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
Urchin is the package that Google purchased and turned into Google Analytics. Recently google announced that they would retire the client-hosted version and leave only the Google-hosted analytics package in place. If you are at all interested, here's a link for more:
That being said, I am confident that what I am talking about is correct. Urchin counts page views as a request for a page from the server. Of course this is different than "hits" which is a request for any server resource, often including multiple "hits" on a given page. Urchin also attempts to count unique visitors which is a completely different metric, as already discussed.
Jeremy, I will send you a message containing more details about my site configuration.
- •
Thread Starter- LeoE
- Flag Collector
Offline
- Registered: April 10, 2012
- Posts: 191
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
I have 135,000 page views daily.
Wow!!!
What's the address of this site?
This one?
.
nobody is perfect but i'm pretty close
see here -> epstein.de
- LeoE
- Flag Collector
Offline
- Registered: April 10, 2012
- Posts: 191
Re: Performance question, server stats lag, upgrade to pro?
Or this?
.
nobody is perfect but i'm pretty close
see here -> epstein.de
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