[thelist] Counting Downloads

John C Bullas jcbullas at nildram.co.uk
Sun Feb 1 03:42:52 CST 2004


At 04:38 01/02/2004, Joshua Olson wrote
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 11:35 PM
> > Subject: [thelist] Counting Downloads
> >
> > I've got a few pdf files in a folder and I'd like to count the number of
> > times they've been downloaded.
> >
> > Ideas?
>
>Sam,
>
>There are probably two favorite approaches to this.
>
>1.  Check the server log files and count the instances.

looking at the logged access to the page itself would be most accurate BUT 
it would still
log spidering by the likes of google

if you have a page with a "non hyperlink" link to the file like a button
or a drop down menu from a central resource page then
you might assume all logged viewing of the page was by "real people"

FB


>2.  Set up a proxy page that is responsible for both issuing the file and
>incrementing a counter somewhere.
>
>HTH.



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