July 9th, 2006
statistics, voxpop
I’ve tried quite a few statistics solutions. BBclone, Shortstat and Refer to name the best. They’re all “client-side”, meaning for every page visited, a small script must be called to update the logs.
Compared to server-side logging, these solutions are usually more readily accessible and typically easier and faster to decode. Unfortunately for me it seems, they all suffer the same problem: after having run for months, stats having poured in, things start to slow down. The database grows with every hit and in the end the server dies because of it.
Having successfully gained useful answers to questions like these in the past, I will try my luck and ask you, esteemed reader:
- What experiences have you had with client-side stats software?
- Have you, unlike me, managed to install software that cleans itself up as it goes and shows only say, the latest month of statistics and successfully deletes the rest?
If at all possible, I would prefer recommendations for free software, since based on past experience, I’m likely to uninstall after a couple of months worth of data.