We want to add tracking statistics to a web application we are building but are pretty unsure of how to go about it. (i.e. clicks, pageviews, unique visits etc)
Does anyone have any articles on the best way to go about incorporating tracking data into an application ? i.e. javascript tracking or IIS etc ?
We want to add tracking in as a ASP.NET MVC module - but we are unsure as to the best way to actually get the data and essentially 'track' this information ?
If anyone could help out - much appreciated.
Edit: just to be clear, we want to do this in-house and present the stats to our users as an additional fee module?
You can turn on the logging for IIS and then use the SQL Server Report Server Pack for IIS. It comes with many canned reports for your sites stats and then you could take it from there with your own custom reports.
You could also just use log parser to get the stats into a SQL Server DB and then you could use SQL from their to analyse and roll your own app.
Either way, you could modularize this and sell it as an add-on to your customer base.
You could use Piwik, you just need PHP version 5.1.3 or greater and MySQL version 4.1 or greater. As they say in their website, "Piwik aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics."
They have a demo on the official website so you can see if it's what you're looking for.
Google analytics is a popular service. You just insert a bit of javascript on every page that contains your sites name and Google tracks the data and provides all the report on a handy web based dashboard.
It's not an ASP.net MVC module like what you mentioned, but it will certain track stats for you and will be a lot simpler to set up than trying to code or integrate anything yourselves.
I'd look at analytics to begin with and only branch out to something more complex if it doesn't meet your requirements.
klabranche provided a holistic answer in terms of using logs of web server. I think using web server log is a a great way to analyse data of your web application.
That being said, depend on your web application and the scope of your analytics, just relay on web server log is not a good way to.
As you may know, web log does not record users behaviors like clicking certain tabs which may not trigger a web server request. Obviously your web log has no idea whether users clicked that tab or not, this may hurt your analyse.
Another you need to know is browser cache, this may create another black hole in your data.
RECAP
If you want to do a holistic analytics, you need to use two approaches, one is JavaScrip tag, another one is web log. Since both of them have shortages, combining them together will give you a complete picture.
Hope this helps
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Let me start with a bit of background: I'm helping a non-profit organization that would like to have a browser-based application that is backed by Salesforce, but has very specific requirements.
I see Salesforce has a REST API that we can call, so we can develop a standalone application to serve the web pages they want and use the REST API to call Salesforce when needed.
I'm wondering if there is a way to host a web application directly on Salesforce; this way we don't have to have a separate application server. Any recommendations or pointers to documentation/open source products is greatly appreciated.
Yes, you can create services that will allow your app to hit Salesforce
Depending on the type of application, yes you can host it on salesforce using the Salesforce Sites feature, also you can develop and host your app on Heroku which is owned by salesforce and can sync data to and from salesforce using Heroku Connect, or you can build and host it on another service like AWS and connect via the REST API. You just need to investigate and choose the option that best fits your use-case. One thing to be aware of is that there are API limits (the number of calls you can make to salesforce in a rolling 24hr period). Depending the the needs of the app be sure to see if those limits will be an issue. Because if the app makes constant calls to salesforce that could be an issue. But there are things you can do to get around that, like caching.
Yes, both Force.com Sites and Site.com features allow you to host webpages on the Force.com Platform. The markup is stored in Visualforce Pages and can use Apex to access records in the Database. I have migrated multiple websites (including our company's www.mkpartners.com) to Force.com using Force.com Sites.
One thing to keep in mind is that you are limited to 500,000 views per month and the rendering of a page with images that are also stored on the platform will incur a single view for the page and a single view for each image. If you already have a very popular website, I wouldn't migrate. If you're a small business or nonprofit, then it should be fine.
Another thing to keep in mind is that dynamic functionality based on records in the database will not work during maintenance windows. There is the ability to upload a static version of your website to be rendered during these windows though.
I have a MySql database set up and a mobile app that should be able to write/read to and from the database.
The data being stored will be posts, comments, votes, etc.
Eventually, I might create a website that uses the same database.
My question is, do I need some sort of middleman (restful) service running or can I just connect straight to the MySql db from the client code (either the mobile app or website)?
Introducing a REST api into the middle would be much beneficial in a lot of ways.
Improve generalization and reuse. (REST api can be used by both mobile client and web client, no need to do the same work twice)
Can maintain business logic centrally. (If there's a logic to change or a bug fix, no need to correct in 2 places)
Can be easily exposed to any other app/client which would need the set of operations provided by the api.
Extending and maintenance of the app would be much simplified and would take minimum effort.
Especially with the mobile application, where you have much less control of updates, it seems better to use some middle-ware to connect to your database.
Say for instance your website needs a little change in the database that would break an active version of the mobile application. A web service could catch that for you.
What about a new version of your mobile app that needs a change. Again a web service can handle that for you.
This is all about cutting dependencies and keep the complete ecosystem adaptable.
Whether this is a rest or any other type of web service is a completely different discussion.
In Sitecore you basically have three databases. The Core, Master and Web database.
Simply put the Core database holds all Sitecore settings. The Master database is the authoring database. So it contains all versions of any content.
Then in Sitecore you can "publish" the contents and it will publish the latest version of each content to the Web database.
So suppose I have a website with a news page. And a user is able to edit a news item from the web site (so not through the CMS). How would the database then get updated when it's set up like this?
It would probably update the Web database, but then when I go into the CMS I don't see the latest changes, since the CMS reads from the Master database, right?
So does that mean that it should write twice? Once to the Web database and once to the Master database?
Can anyone tell me how this works in Sitecore or the like?
The reason I'd like to know this is becasue I'm thinking of creating a similar database setup. And I'm just not sure how to solve this issue.
When you have items that needs to be updated by the website visitor, you need to use the SitecoreService SOAP webservice or create your own custom webservice that runs on the Master-instance and triggers a publish after updating.
Well, Sitecore has a publishing step. When the user publishes in Sitecore, it updates the Web database at that point. If you want to build a similar system, I would simply store all versions of an item in the Master database and only when the user chooses to publish, copy the latest version to the Web database.
If your site
- generates a lot of comments
- generates the comments continuously
- uses multiple content delivery servers
- requires CMS users to manage them
I would not store the comments as content items.
The reason is HTML cache and publishing behavior.
On high volume site you'd most certainly use html caching to achieve best possible performance. If a publish is required to show comments, you'd need frequent publish actions and thus html caches are cleared often.
You don't wan't that :-)
Modeling after the DMS implementation is the safest (not cheapest and Datatables isn't something I recommend these days), storing stuff in a separate database, possibly using queuing to prevent an overload if things get busy..
I feel very out of my depth with this query, but not being able to do it isn't really an option so I am going to have to learn how one way or another.
I have been tasked with building an application / database for a Chauffeur company. I have done similar things before in Microsoft Access for other customers, hence getting this request, but this customer wants to be able to run the app on their Mac, and not install Windows. My only real experience of coding is HTML/CSS and some VBA when using Microsoft Access. For these Access DBs I have created separate front and back end files to allow multi user access and also remote access (the back end file being kept on the company server).
So onto my query (apologies for dragging it out)...
I need to be able to build something that the single user can open and run on his Mac, so he can view, add, change jobs and their details. He also needs to have the same access on his iPad, although purely viewing would suffice.
As regards the web access, basically he wants to be able to go onto his "Booking System" application, go to "New Job" and send a link to his client, where they would click the link in a browser, fill in the details (Name, Contact Number, collection and drop off addresses, collection date and time etc...) and when they submit this form the details be updated on his booking system.
My issue is I do not really know where to start. I just need some pointers as to where to get started. Is it an issue of building a MySQL database back end and then hosting this somewhere and linking different front ends to it etc...
Yes, with multiple clients, the web is your best answer. For the cheapest hosting route, you can find good, inexpensive PHP and MySQL hosting that will provide what you need. You can design the front end with HTML/CSS, use PHP to develop the logic and data access, and use MySQL to host the data.
The Mac and iPad can access the application via the web URL--you will not be building an iOS app, rather the user will access the web site through a web browser. You can use some pretty neat tools like jQuery UI Mobile to create an app-like experience, but if you need to support multiple clients on a small budget, an iOS app and separate web site is not the way to go.
Make sure you have some PHP expertise available or figure this part out. There are tons of great resources on the web to get started. Good luck!
My question is how do i get information from a server to my iphone app. let's assume I have completed my current project I'm working on that only needs data to be uploaded to my application.
I understand there is a database or server I must create but how do I go about creating or modifying one for my needs.
I mainly want to store login information from one user and allow users to search for people who have entered login information (name) to add to a friends lists within the current app.
i think in your case you can use Django-tastypie for backend will be good choice.since using django you can develop it in quick time and the tastypie has api services which can used easily for retrieval and sending data
you can go through this
http://django-tastypie.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
Take a look at services like Stackmob or Parse. These types of service could make it really easy for you to get the server side part of your application up and running. These services would act as your database and also provide an easy api for you to access the server side pieces.