[thelist] IIS, Cookies and html pages

[Warden, Matt]

> From: "Bob Davis" <bobd at members.evolt.org>
> Subject: [thelist] IIS, Cookies and html pages
>

> I've been looking through the docs for IIS 5, and I can't seem to
> figure out if there's a way to use cookies with static HTML files to
> track visitors through the site.

Well, bob, guess what I'm doing right now. I just happen to be doing this
exactly thing (sans the html-only) on NT/IIS4. My solution happens to be in
ASP. I assume there's a reason you can't do a ASP or CGI solution, so I'll
skip going into that.

> I have a client who is interested in getting "click trails" for users
> and "entry pages". They've been using WebTrends in the past, but have
> changed their hosting. They own their server, and have the
> flexibility to do whatever they want, so any suggestions would be
> helpful.
>
> Right now, I'm just grabbing their log files and running them through
> Analog. I don't believe there's a way to generate click trail reports
> and entry page reports in Analog though. Cookies seem to be the way
> to do this (presumably).

Well, ok, I assume you can set up customer HTTP headers somehow in IIS
(since that's how you set a cookie). But, even if you did, you'd need
something to READ those cookies afterwards. And, what would you put in the
cookie? The entire clickstream (remember, the limit to cookies is 4k, I
believe)? If not, you'll probably need to store an ID in the cookie that
relates to some database records that make up the clickstream. So, you need
a datastore as well and something to interact with that datastore.

So, my guess is you can't do it with IIS configurations along. You're gonna
have to use some scripting. Is there a reason you can't? If it's just
because you don't do that programming thang, there are some ready-made
solutions out there that aren't as large as Webtrends.


hth a bit,


--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com