Thanks Mike, You make some good points. >From a volume point of view I don't think making the writes to the DB will have much effect as it's a low traffic site. I guess I'm going to have to do some reading on SESSION() Thanks!! Tim Winters Creative Development Manager Sampling Technologies Incorporated 1600 Bedford Highway, Suite 212 Bedford, Nova Scotia B4A 1E8 www.samplingtechnologies.com webmaster@samplingtechnologies.com csnm@samplingtechnologies.com Office: 902 450 5500 Cell: 902 430 8498 Fax:: 902 484 7115 -----Original Message----- From: Mike [mailto:php@crazyted.com] Sent: June 23, 2003 9:37 AM To: csnm@samplingtechnologies.com; 'PHP-DB' Subject: RE: Page Use I'm sure an application like this has already been written, but here are some considerations if you'd like to build your own: -You need to start a session or have some other functionality that identifies each user uniquely as they browse your pages. -For EVERY page the user visits, you're going to need to record that information in a database (page, userID, time, etc) -You can't really record when they leave - but more accurately when they browse another page. This will give you the approx. end time to the previous page view and also allow you to "track" their flow through the site. -When you create your reporting interface, just have it ignore gaps of a certain length of time between page views. If someone has a gap of 10 hours, then they've probably gone to bed or left work and come back to it the next day. It doesn't make sense to count the page view as being "10 hours long". So yes, it's possible with PHP. Is it worthwhile? Eh, maybe. But just realize the overhead that you'll be putting on a busy site with a DB entry for EVERY page view - even for pages with no dynamic content (not to mention any pages that might require real DB querying). -M -----Original Message----- From: Tim Winters [mailto:csnm@samplingtechnologies.com] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 8:06 AM To: 'PHP-DB' Subject: Page Use Hello, I'm interested in setting up a system whereby I can track a users movements through a site. I particularly I am interested in recording both that the user actually hit the page but also the time he spent on that page. Is this possible using PHP and if so how? Thx Tim Winters Creative Development Manager Sampling Technologies Incorporated 1600 Bedford Highway, Suite 212 Bedford, Nova Scotia B4A 1E8 www.samplingtechnologies.com webmaster@samplingtechnologies.com csnm@samplingtechnologies.com Office: 902 450 5500 Cell: 902 430 8498 Fax:: 902 484 7115 -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
