RB4 MANUAL CHAPTER 1 - ScriptKeeper.Net

RB4 v 1.0 MANUAL

1 TRACKING INCOMING HITS

1. 1 PLACING TRACKER CODE

In order to track incoming traffic, you will need to place a tracker code on your page. The best idea would be to put this code into the HEAD part of your HTML page. If you are not sure which part of HTML is the HEAD part, you should reconsider your decision to be a webmaster. Either way, HEAD part is the code between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> HTML tags. Usualy, these will be right on top of your document. Why is it important to place tracker code on top of your document? It will improve the accuracy of the tracking system.

In most cases, your tracker code would be something like this:

cgi-bin/rb4 would be the path where the binary files of RB4 script are located. If you have different configuration, you will need to replace this fragment.

IMPORTANT:
Make sure that you DO NOT save your page from the web and upload it back using FTP client. The code above will not appear on your web page. It will be replaced by a simple JavaScript by your server software. The most common mistake that webmasters make, is save their own page from the web and upload it on server. If you absolutely need to do so, please remove RB4 JavaScript from HTML and insert the tracking code again.

In order for incoming traffic to be tracked correctly, SSI (Server Side Includes) should be activated for your page. On most servers, SSI is enabled for ".shtml" files by default. If SSI is not working properly, RB4 will NOT track incoming traffic and the tracker code will not be replaced with JavaScript. There are 2 ways to enable SSI:

Ask your host to do that for you :-)
Add the following line to your .htaccess file:
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

Of course, you can put ".html" instead of ".shtml", although I would recommend to consult your host before doing that! Also, there is no garantee that .htaccess code will always work. It depends on the web server configuration. Some web servers will give 500 Internal Server error after you use the AddHandler directive. It's worth a try though.

Below is a sample JavaScript that will appear on your page if your configuration is correct:

<SCRIPT language=JavaScript>

1. 2 IGNORING TRAFFIC

In some cases you might want NOT to count certain traffic that comes to your page. You can do so by adding ?bypass code at the end of your page URL. RB4 will just ignore the traffic with this code.

Why would anyone need this? Here is one example: A webmaster has 2 pages on his site where he wants to track traffic. Most common practice is index.html and main.html. He might also want to embed one page into another using <FRAMESET> tag. If tracker code is placed on both pages, the same traffic will be counted twice, unless he uses the following <FRAME> tag syntax in his index.html:

<FRAME SRC='main.html?bypass'>

This method will prevent traffic to be counted twice on the sites that use frames.

1. 3 ACCURACY OF TRACKING

EVERY visotor (request) to your page is being logged by RB4 script. Tracking incoming hits does NOT depend on the location of the tracking code inside your page. Even if you place the code down on the bottom, and the visitor will not even load the page up to that place, RB4 will have it tracked. However, this littile JavaScript that RB4 generates will set a cookie with a set of important variables. Placing your code higher means setting a cookie faster. Cookies are used to track productivity of your every trade. Cookies are being set on your visitors computer, not your server! In order to have correct productivity stats, the majority of you visitors should have cookies enabled.

1. 4 COMMON PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS