Nofollow the Leader
Following the lead of SixApart, Google and the suggestion of Mark Nichols, I’m releasing a quick update to ShortStat that adds rel="nofollow" to all external links. This update is available as a standalone installer or functions.php can be downloaded separately and swapped with the file of the same name in your existing v0.35b install.
Download:
(Beta testers will be receiving an update via email later tonight)
019 Comments
cheers shaun! kudos to you and your fantastic stats package.
I’m definitely all over this. It wasn’t until I heard it from one forum and I thought, oh, ok, that’s nice google is doing that…oh wait, yahoo and msn too? oh wait…then I checked my email to find that the SP Tech Times wrote about it, then all the sudden it appeared on everyone and their mothers blog.
Definitely a step in the right direction. Just for kicks I put up a link to some Poker website on my Home Page just to taunt ‘em (Yes, I know it’s script generated).
When I first read about the rel=”nofollow” tag I was pretty excited and figured it was a huge step in the right direction. But the more I thought about it the more my views became parallel to Michael’s over at Binary Bonsai
I don’t disagree with Michael. I don’t think it’s going to solve the comment spam problem and like DRM only hurts legitimate users but ShortStat is only interested in the effect it will have on referrer spammers. It’s not going to eliminate the problem single-handedly but it goes a long way to removing the incentive (increased PageRank) from referrer spamming.
Thanks for the darn quick update.
On a similar thread I put together a very short PHP script that ‘de-spams’ ShortStat using Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist master list. It seems that most - if not all - of the comment spammer domains are the same as those who are doing referer spamming, so the technique seems fairly effective. Hope someone finds it of use (and feel free to expand upon it…).
ooo, this is so much better than those stats apps that reside on other servers that are down all the time. plus i can hack the css to make it look more me-like. woo!
Would it be possible to add a function to ad IP addresses into the config file that you don’t want to get logged? I find myself testing out pages quite often and would rather that it didn’t log how often I refresh the pages.
Your stats package is fabulous. Thanks for all your hard work. Keep rockin’ bro.
I downloaded ShortStat tonight and I have to say…THANK YOU! What a great package!
Where can I report problems? I’ve been using this for a couple of weeks and I’m pretty certain that I configured everything correctly, but I get no results for search strings and country. I see visits from google and yahoo, but still no search strings. The whole IP to country thing is in my database also.
Trying out the shortstat now, and so far I like it. If I was to add anything, I would have to agree with Paul that a IP blokker of som sort would be nice. That way if I access my site from work, I can block the IP, so that this does not get added to the statistics.
If i was to be really picky, I would like to see a future version with a IP list (I know it is in the database), and possible even a dns lookup. However those probably should be restricted to localhost view only by default.
But overall, a great tool! Keep up the good work!
Such a great device you have created there Shaun - Thank you very much.
Is it necessary to have .php pages in order for this to work or can I add the tracking line to a normal .html page?
Also, when working with several domains on one server, it is possible to track the different domains, or only pages from under one domain?
Cheers, Tom
Installed shortstat in my site. Very easy to install and configure for static pages but I’m yet to make it work with TXP. Jon Hick’s explanation does not help non php savvy users. I hope v1 (which I am very much looking forward to) comes with some documentation for popular cms and blog systems. I disagree with some of the posts here as far as the ‘blocking IPs’. A cookie (similar to that provided by thecounter.com) might be better as it allows users with non static IPs to use the program efficiently.
Great tool!
Thanks Neme.
I’ve already built a cookie-based means of ignoring your own hits into v2.0.
I don’t have any experience with TXP (or CMS outside of MT) so at the moment all I have to offer is what the community feels like sharing. One method to look into that should work with most any CMS is using
.htaccessandphp_value auto_prepend_fileto include ShortStat in every page (unless, that is, you are running PHP as CGI which breaks that value). This will also allow you to track html pages by adding the following line to the .htaccess file:That will force any page with an
.htmlor.htmextension to be parsed as PHP.Shaun - great app. I have just installed it on my site. Perhaps setting an admin cookie from the stats page and not counting browsers with that cookie would help with self referals. This technique is used on the ‘jolly good but not updated for an age’ pphlogger stats app.
Oh right thicky me - you have it already in V 2…
Hi.. Is it possible to put a link to your most current shortstat program somewhere so we don’t have to do a ‘search’ to find the most recent one?
also.. how does one sign up for the beta? please add me.
TIA Ian
Hmm maybe I should have posted here instead of the original ShortStat thread because this one is newer. Anyway, I made some improvements you all might find useful. Check the original thread for details.