Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
9 posts by 6 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: December 7, 2010 (RSS)
Hi all,
Having done a search on this I saw a couple of old posts on the matter and wondered whether the situation had changed over the last 12 months. As we charge a small fee (£1. per week) for advertising accommodation on one of our websites I am often asked if it is possible to implement a viewable hit counter for each listing.
Ideally I would like to have a counter which shows how many times the listing page has been viewed (we can get this info from our webstats but would like to have a live incrementing counter on the listings page and a seperate counter showing how many times the detail page has been visited for each listing ad. This facility would help both ourselves and our customers in order to determine which listings are achieving the best clickthrough rates so we could analyse and provide advice on how to generate summary listing information to optimise click throughs to view the detailed advertising as we get some clients saying they get a great response and others who say they get nothing. All ads are self administered by the client and some obviously make more effort than others in promoting their accommodation and it would be helpful to be able to demonstrate where the issues are, ie you are getting plenty of people looking at your ad but not following onto the detail page so improve your summary, or you are getting the detail page views but if that isnt converting to enquiries then improve your detail page. At present it is impossible for us to defend our position in relation to confirming that we are doing our bit by getting visitors to the listing pages but their content is letting them down.
I am not a php programmer but good at copy and pasting so any help on this would be appreciated, I have seen a similar facility used on a site which basically says this advertisement has been viewed x number of times which would be what we are looking to achieve.
Thanks in advance for any help provided.
Having done a search on this I saw a couple of old posts on the matter and wondered whether the situation had changed over the last 12 months. As we charge a small fee (£1. per week) for advertising accommodation on one of our websites I am often asked if it is possible to implement a viewable hit counter for each listing.
Ideally I would like to have a counter which shows how many times the listing page has been viewed (we can get this info from our webstats but would like to have a live incrementing counter on the listings page and a seperate counter showing how many times the detail page has been visited for each listing ad. This facility would help both ourselves and our customers in order to determine which listings are achieving the best clickthrough rates so we could analyse and provide advice on how to generate summary listing information to optimise click throughs to view the detailed advertising as we get some clients saying they get a great response and others who say they get nothing. All ads are self administered by the client and some obviously make more effort than others in promoting their accommodation and it would be helpful to be able to demonstrate where the issues are, ie you are getting plenty of people looking at your ad but not following onto the detail page so improve your summary, or you are getting the detail page views but if that isnt converting to enquiries then improve your detail page. At present it is impossible for us to defend our position in relation to confirming that we are doing our bit by getting visitors to the listing pages but their content is letting them down.
I am not a php programmer but good at copy and pasting so any help on this would be appreciated, I have seen a similar facility used on a site which basically says this advertisement has been viewed x number of times which would be what we are looking to achieve.
Thanks in advance for any help provided.
Re: [willydoit] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By Jason - December 3, 2010
Hi,
There are a lot of different ways you can achieve this. For example, you can keep track of how many times a detail page by using an sql query to increment a field inside that record each time the page loads. It would be a little harder to do this for a listing page, because a listing page doesn't have a particular record.
I think the best way to do this would be to have a section that increments the number of hits based on it's url, that way you can track listings and detail pages in the same section.
We could create a plugin that would automatically increment the count each time the page loads. The plugin could have some simple php functions that you could call to get the count for that page. If you'd be interested in this, please send an email to consulting@interactivetools.com and we can go over what it would take to accomplish this.
Hope this helps.
There are a lot of different ways you can achieve this. For example, you can keep track of how many times a detail page by using an sql query to increment a field inside that record each time the page loads. It would be a little harder to do this for a listing page, because a listing page doesn't have a particular record.
I think the best way to do this would be to have a section that increments the number of hits based on it's url, that way you can track listings and detail pages in the same section.
We could create a plugin that would automatically increment the count each time the page loads. The plugin could have some simple php functions that you could call to get the count for that page. If you'd be interested in this, please send an email to consulting@interactivetools.com and we can go over what it would take to accomplish this.
Hope this helps.
---------------------------------------------------
Jason Sauchuk - Project Manager
interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
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Jason Sauchuk - Project Manager
interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/
Re: [Jason] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By Mikey - December 5, 2010
Jason... If you make it as an Add-On, I'd purchase it.
Re: [zick] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By Jason - December 6, 2010
Hi,
We don't have any current plans to develop this an an Add-on, but it could be done as a custom job. If send an email to consulting@interactivetools.com with a list of requirements for what you would need the add-on to be capable of, we can let give you an estimate on what it would cost.
Hope this helps.
We don't have any current plans to develop this an an Add-on, but it could be done as a custom job. If send an email to consulting@interactivetools.com with a list of requirements for what you would need the add-on to be capable of, we can let give you an estimate on what it would cost.
Hope this helps.
---------------------------------------------------
Jason Sauchuk - Project Manager
interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/
Jason Sauchuk - Project Manager
interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/
Re: [willydoit] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By gkornbluth - December 6, 2010 - edited: December 6, 2010
Hi Willydoit,
I've been using a simple PHP hit counter to count hits on my pages by incrementing a .txt file for quite a while.
Here's an excerpt from my CMSB Cookbook http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com that shows the code necessary.
CREATING A SIMPLE PHP HIT COUNTER
For each page that you want to count hits on, create a text document with the number that you want your counter to start with, and a unique file name, like: aboutpagecounter.txt and upload it to your site.
I usually insert the number 500 in my text files, so that my counters will not display a really small number at first, but you can start them with any number you want to.
If you have many separate counters, you might want to create a folder for your counter text files.
Then somewhere in the body of the page that you want to count, insert this code, changing the file name and path to suit your particular situation:
Then, where you want your hit count to appear, insert this line of code:
_____ code
You can, of course style your counter any way you want to.
___________________________________________
There's also a neat on line program I've used in the past called Crazy Egg. http://www.crazyegg.com/ It creates a heat map to track where visitors click on your pages.
Hope that helps,
Jerry Kornbluth
I've been using a simple PHP hit counter to count hits on my pages by incrementing a .txt file for quite a while.
Here's an excerpt from my CMSB Cookbook http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com that shows the code necessary.
CREATING A SIMPLE PHP HIT COUNTER
For each page that you want to count hits on, create a text document with the number that you want your counter to start with, and a unique file name, like: aboutpagecounter.txt and upload it to your site.
I usually insert the number 500 in my text files, so that my counters will not display a really small number at first, but you can start them with any number you want to.
If you have many separate counters, you might want to create a folder for your counter text files.
Then somewhere in the body of the page that you want to count, insert this code, changing the file name and path to suit your particular situation:
<?php
$count_my_page = ("aboutpagecounter.txt");
$hits = file($count_my_page);
$hits[0] ++;
$fp = fopen($count_my_page , "w");
fputs($fp , "$hits[0]");
fclose($fp);?>Then, where you want your hit count to appear, insert this line of code:
_____ code
<?php echo $hits[0]; ?>You can, of course style your counter any way you want to.
___________________________________________
There's also a neat on line program I've used in the past called Crazy Egg. http://www.crazyegg.com/ It creates a heat map to track where visitors click on your pages.
Hope that helps,
Jerry Kornbluth
The first CMS Builder reference book is now available on-line!
Take advantage of a free 3 month trial subscription, only for CMSB users, at: http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com/trial.php
Take advantage of a free 3 month trial subscription, only for CMSB users, at: http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com/trial.php
Re: [gkornbluth] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By Codee - December 6, 2010
Hey WillyDoIt,
One additional suggestion, if you have the membership plugin, is consider making the counter viewable only to you and your vendors and not the general public. The membership plugin allows certain contact to be viewable by certain logged in account holders and not to everyone (if you set it up that way). Just a thought.
One additional suggestion, if you have the membership plugin, is consider making the counter viewable only to you and your vendors and not the general public. The membership plugin allows certain contact to be viewable by certain logged in account holders and not to everyone (if you set it up that way). Just a thought.
Re: [equinox69] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
Hi Thanks for that,
My main priority is to show how many times each clients detail page has been viewed and so need todifferentiate between each clients information being viewed, I assume your suggestion will just show how many times the details.php page has been loaded irrelevant of whos data it contained, can this be extended to create a hits log for each client?
Thanks in advance
My main priority is to show how many times each clients detail page has been viewed and so need todifferentiate between each clients information being viewed, I assume your suggestion will just show how many times the details.php page has been loaded irrelevant of whos data it contained, can this be extended to create a hits log for each client?
Thanks in advance
Re: [willydoit] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By Codee - December 7, 2010
My answer is based upon me believing I am clearly understanding what you are asking... ;-)
To do this, what you would do is have each set of client's data pages under their account name as owner and/or creator...or make a separate field for "record user" or something and have it pull the user accounts field from the accounts section and you choose which user is attached to each set of records. By doing this, when they login, they will only see the records associated with their login.
For example, I have a client that is a teacher. She gives individualized lessons. Each of her students has an account in CMS that ONLY allows them to see the listings/detail pages for records that are linked to their user account. So when they login they only get the listings for their lessons and are able to click on the details pages for each of only their lessons. None of the students know about the CMSB backend...the login page takes them directly to the lessons listings page after user/pass are submitted. [If you have the membership plugin you'll see there is a separate login page template included with the plugin (that's modifiable) so you don't have to hand out the admin URL for CMSB at all.]
To do this, what you would do is have each set of client's data pages under their account name as owner and/or creator...or make a separate field for "record user" or something and have it pull the user accounts field from the accounts section and you choose which user is attached to each set of records. By doing this, when they login, they will only see the records associated with their login.
For example, I have a client that is a teacher. She gives individualized lessons. Each of her students has an account in CMS that ONLY allows them to see the listings/detail pages for records that are linked to their user account. So when they login they only get the listings for their lessons and are able to click on the details pages for each of only their lessons. None of the students know about the CMSB backend...the login page takes them directly to the lessons listings page after user/pass are submitted. [If you have the membership plugin you'll see there is a separate login page template included with the plugin (that's modifiable) so you don't have to hand out the admin URL for CMSB at all.]
Re: [willydoit] Showing number of times a listing has been viewed
By Dave - December 7, 2010
Hi Willy,
Not sure if it's exactly what you want, but check out this post as well:
http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=68091#68091
Hope that helps!
Not sure if it's exactly what you want, but check out this post as well:
http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=68091#68091
Hope that helps!
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com
interactivetools.com