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Detect hotlink image views

Image traffic is not the same as views, it could be considered the same but that is a mistake. A view is when the image is viewed within your website (Chevereto), anything else is traffic.

So, I think that it will be better to show views + traffic (maybe sources?). To do that I need to have access to the server logs and write a parser that detects traffic for each image. Problem is images within an external storage so is not that easy if we add that element.

Anyway, I think that it should be added.
 
maybe its the traffic i don't know exactly about this...

about a month ago i shared an imgur hotlink on reddit and it got very popular... when i checked the statistics of the image it counteted all the views. So i dont know if it countet the traffic or unique views anyway and the traffic is good to have as an option, it does the job... i think it should be added.

thanks
Rodolfo said:
Image traffic is not the same as views, it could be considered the same but that is a mistake. A view is when the image is viewed within your website (Chevereto), anything else is traffic.

So, I think that it will be better to show views + traffic (maybe sources?). To do that I need to have access to the server logs and write a parser that detects traffic for each image. Problem is images within an external storage so is not that easy if we add that element.

Anyway, I think that it should be added.[/QUOTE
Click to expand...
 
Usually in web a view is any content that when viewed could get you money (mostly with ads). So, views are used to determine how valuable a website is because more views means more people interested in any given content.

Having said that, a view should never be considered as the same as image traffic because that is just wasted traffic with no income left to be made. The view made from those is just a number, it doesn't show how valuable your website is.

In short, views from all traffic are just a number with no sense. That's why views counts people viewing your page and traffic counts hits on the image.

Almost the same thing, almost the same name.
 
i totally understand you... this option is not good only if you run pay per view so users will manipulate and you dont know if views were from hotlink or view page but for owners for admins is good to have an option to track all views of an hotlink image. hope you understand me now what i mean.
thanks again for the reply.
 
I'm currently building hotlinked views into my site.

I run an hourly cron that scours the server access logs. I haven't worked out how resource intensive it is yet, but I may be able to run it more often if it's only tiny.

The script looks for "GET /images/" then grabs that entry to get the details of the image, then grabs the line number in the log for this entry. It then updates two new columns on the image table. access_views, and line_id. If the line ID that is found for the image is greater than the last line ID in the access log, it updates the number of hot-linked views. I might change this to append the log file with some sort of flag to say that the info has been grabbed, which may reduce the SQL overheads, but as I say, this is just a work in progress.

Thinking out loud, flags might be a good idea, as when the logs get to 2.25mb, they start again and compress themselves, so the line number will also reduce. OK, so I think I've just decided on flags lol

I also toyed with writing the logs to MySQL instead of searching the text files, but I can't see that adding any value really.

If anybody (@Rodolfo) can think of a better way to achieve it, I will happily share the script with people when it's finished.
 
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You don't understand, is wrong to fool that number. In that case just add a random +views why all the trouble? Are you tracking all views? Unique views? Hits? In any case you are just building a fake number because a hit or view on the direct image is not the same as a view of the image page.

I don't want to link traffic with image views and that's why I want to add support for third partly plug-ins because I'm tired of having to add absolutely everything that you see around. Everytime when imgur or anyone adds a new feature is almost mandatory that it should be added to Chevereto and that's wrong. Since there are stuff that I don't want to add plug-ins will work perfect for those cases.

We should focus in add good stuff, is OK to copy other people good stuff but they also make mistakes, why copy that?
 
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Rodolfo said:
You don't understand, is wrong to fool that number. In that case just add a random +views why all the trouble? Are you tracking all views? Unique views? Hits? In any case you are just building a fake number because a hit or view on the direct image is not the same as a view of the image page.

I don't want to link traffic with image views and that's why I want to add support for third partly plug-ins because I'm tired of having to add absolutely everything that you see around. Everytime when imgur or anyone adds a new feature is almost mandatory that it should be added to Chevereto and that's wrong. Since there are stuff that I don't want to add plug-ins will work perfect for those cases.

We should focus in add good stuff, is OK to copy other people good stuff but they also make mistakes, why copy that?
Click to expand...


Was that aimed at me ??
 
malvernweb said:
Was that aimed at me ??
Click to expand...
Yes, I didn't quoted it.

Dont take me wrong, traffic should be considered and it is should be displayed but is no the same as views. If I add this it won't be to populate image views but understand traffic and learn about traffic sources.

If you want to populate views go ahead and best way to do it is with an access log parser, actually is the only way.

Cheers,
Rodolfo.
 
Rodolfo said:
Yes, I didn't quoted it.

Dont take me wrong, traffic should be considered and it is should be displayed but is no the same as views. If I add this it won't be to populate image views but understand traffic and learn about traffic sources.

If you want to populate views go ahead and best way to do it is with an access log parser, actually is the only way.

Cheers,
Rodolfo.
Click to expand...

@Rodolfo

I'm not suggesting it's added as a feature for image views, I am just writing something for my own personal amusement lol

Im curious to see which images are being hammered and which rarely get a look in, which the access logs will show me. I'm not really interested in how many unique views they get etc, just data mining really.
 
malvernweb said:
Im curious to see which images are being hammered and which rarely get a look in, which the access logs will show me. I'm not really interested in how many unique views they get etc, just data mining really.
Click to expand...

You should take a look to webalizer, is old but it shows you exactly that.
 
@Rodolfo,
you can deliver the images over php and you can track every hotlink view. Sure is coast a small piece of cpu power but you have full controll over hotlinking, hits etc.
 
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