Natalia Lis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > I didn't set Analog and I have no background in IT. I'm just trying to > interpret the results for my company's site. It is a financial website > with a lot of graphs updated every minute and other sections which are > also frequently updated. We also share our real-time graphs which are > very often displayed on third-party websites. > > 1.Given that most of our pages contain frequently updated elements, > what may be the effect of this on the cache issue? Is it reasonable to > expect that visitors will be less likely to use the cached version and > our results are less likely to be skewed by this problem?
It's not a "problem" as such, it's just something to be aware of when interpreting the data in your log files - some people will be able to "see your website" without actually making any connection to it, if they use a caching proxy server and an earlier user has already cached the requested pages, and other people may appear to be multiple people, if they access your site through an array of proxy servers. In the case of "dynamic" data that is generated "on the fly" every time a user accesses it, there should be a "no-cache" header that will tell a caching proxy to always request a "fresh" copy. But if "frequently updated" means that you generate a new copy every 10 minutes, then it's quite possible that each copy may get cached somewhere. Having said all that, caching doesn't usually have a major impact on the numbers, and, more importantly, that impact doesn't tend to change much. So even if there's an X% skew in the numbers, the skew is likely to be X% next month and the month after that, as long as there haven't been any major changes in the environment. A different site, though, might have a Y% skew, because their customer base is different, and their usage pattern is different. > 2.What can be the effect of sharing our graphs on "Individual hosts > served" category? If people see our graphs on a third-party website, > those views will count as "requests" in Analog (right?) but will those > people be included in the "individual hosts served" count or will > Analog only see the page on which the graphs are displayed? There are 2 different issues here - "Individual Hosts Served" means the number of end users who make a request against your server. "Sharing your graphs" could mean a number of different things - it could mean that some 3rd party server copies your graphs and puts it on their site, in which case you'll never see the requests for those graphs in your log files. Or it could mean that those sites simpley point to the data on your website, so that the end user sends the request to your server, and that end user is an "Individual Host Served". They key difference between such a "3rd party" visitor, and a direct visitor, is that the "3rd party" visitor will indicate that "3rd party" in their referrer field. For example, if you go to the home page for Analog (http://analog.cx/), you'll see a button for Sourceforge on the right, below the blue box. The source for that image is the Sourceforge server. The log files for analog.cx don't contain any information about whether or not users ever see that Sourceforge button, but the logfiles for the sourceforge.net server will show that that image was requested by you, and that you were told to load that image by the analog.cx page. Aengus +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | TO UNSUBSCRIBE from this list: | http://lists.meer.net/mailman/listinfo/analog-help | | Analog Documentation: http://analog.cx/docs/Readme.html | List archives: http://www.analog.cx/docs/mailing.html#listarchives | Usenet version: news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.analog.general +------------------------------------------------------------------------
