Installation and Usage
for HITMATIC Website Hit Statistics System
This copy of HITMAT.ZIP contains the latest revised
edition with all required files for a complete installation.
Revision Date: hitmat.zip - October 8, 2006
Copyright: 1996-2006 by Joe DePasquale
E-Mail: crypt@getcruising.com
Website: http://www.GetCruising.com
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This application is for Unix web servers running Perl 5.0 or higher.
Additional documentation is available at http://www.GetCruising/crypt
helpme.txt - How to install Perl scripts on a Unix server.
whatsnew.txt - Revision history for all 'CGI Scripts from the Crypt'.
Also visit the "Users' Self-Support Forum" to post questions and
answers, especially if you have some extra time, knowledge and
a desire to help some other poor lost souls!
THERE IS *NO* FREE *NOR* FEE-BASED TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR THESE SCRIPTS!
Due to extremely limited time, E-Mail with technical support
questions WILL NOT BE ANSWERED! Please use the available resources
here and elsewhere on the WWW to solve problems.
E-Mail genuine bug reports to: crypt@getcruising.com
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WHAT IT DOES:
HITMATIC is a comprehensive tool for website visitor tracking and
analysis. It maintains counts of pageviews and visitors for a year.
Input to the script comes from special image tags that you place on each
web page that you want included in the system. When a browser loads
one of these pages it expects to receive a graphic from the URL in the
tag. Instead, the URL runs HITMATIC which counts and categorizes the hit,
does some maintenance stuff and finally outputs the graphic (a tiny GIF)
to the browser.
'hit1.log' and 'hit2.log' save todays' and yesterday's hit data with
one line per hit (timestampe, pagecode + group, user's IP address,
referring page and browser type).
There are 24 numbered counter files which correspons to the month of
the year. 12 hold the pageviews count named hitp1.txt - hitp12.txt and
12 hold the visitors count names hitv1.txt - hitv12.txt.
The manager module (hitman.pl) gives you a choice of statistical tables
showing counts of pageviews or visitors by month or by day.
The 'Full Year' table starts 12 months ago and ends at the end of current
month. The grid shows the total hits by month for each group and each
page, ranked most to least popular. 'By [Month]' shows the hits by day for
one month.
Daily file maintenance is run when the first visitor of the day causes
HITMATIC to run. Several things happen: 'hit1.log' is read and all hits
for the previous day are added to the monthly data files. If it's the
first day of a new month, last year's month file is emptied. 'hit1.log'
is renamed 'hit2.log', yesterday's 'hit2.log' is emptied and renamed
'hit1.log'.
HITMATIC uses the Perl 'flock' function to prevent simultaneous
changes (corruption) of data files.
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INSTALLATION:
1. SETUP YOUR FILES -
The 'hittxt.cfg' file is initially set to 0|0|. It will be used by the script
to determine whether the day has changed since last time the script was
run. It does not need to be changed manually.
Add a reference to each HTML page to be counted, following this example:
<img
src="http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/hitmat.cgi?PAGECODE+GROUPCODE">
You will need to make these substitutions --
'PAGECODE' is a unique name (with NO SPACES, pipes (|) or plus signs (+))
for the page being counted. It can be real or symbolic (albert/home.html,
links, page1, etc.).
'GROUPCODE' is optional but you can subdivide your hitcounts into
subject areas or websites. You should use a single letter or number for
each group, although you can use more and other characters with caution.
2. CONFIGURE THE SCRIPT -
Open the main script file 'hitmat.cgi' in a text editor and change
the sample paths in the "CONFIGURE THE SCRIPT" section,
following the instructions found there.
3. UPLOAD FILES AND SET (CHMOD) PERMISSIONS -
The .gif file must be uploaded in binary mode. All the other files must
be uploaded in ASCII mode.
Place 'hitmat.cgi' (755) and 'hitman.pl' (644) into your main cgi folder.
Create a folder named 'hitmat' (755) and place 'hitcfg.txt' (666),
'hitflk.txt' (666), 'hit1.log' (666), 'hit2.log' (666), 'hitpwd.txt' (666),
'hit.gif' (644) and the 24 counter files ('hitp1-hitp12.txt' and 'hitv1-
hitv12.txt' (666) in that folder.
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HOW TO USE IT:
If set up correctly (!) just sit back and watch (?) as the script
and your visitors do all the work.
To RUN HITMATIC MANAGER, use 'manager' as a query-string.
Examples -
http://www.GetCruising.com/cgibin/hitmat.cgi?manager
The response should be the password authorization form. The
initial password is 'password'. Of course you should change it soon
to something unique by entering a new password in the
'Change Password' box.
The default HIT TABLE is PAGEVIEWS By YEAR starting 12 months ago and
ending at the end of current month. To switch to display of the number
of VISITS, select VISITS and click REFRESH. To switch to counts for
each day select a month from the drop down list, select either
PAGEVIEWS or VISITS and click REFRESH. You can switch between displays.
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What are you reading this for? DO IT!