Using htaccess to track visitors?

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Using htaccess to track visitors?

I have a demo server where I put samples of my apps, I send potential customers links to those apps. Is it possible to use htaccess to track visitors, without adding tracking capability to the apps themselves? The data I'm interested in are:

date and time of page visit
ip of visitor
url of the page visited
referrer
post and get (query string) data if any

Best way it to use google analytics.
You will get all what you need and much much more.

darko petreski 2010-09-13 09:33:58

Thanks, but I'm more interested in a solution where I don't need to alter the projects' code. With GA I'd have to add the js reference to my code.

Majid 2010-09-13 09:44:23

+1 A:

no, that's impossible to use .htaccess file, because it's merely a configuration file, not executable one.

However you can use another web-server capability - log files.
Everything you asking for is already stored in the access log, almost in the same format you listed here.

An important note: unlike google analytics or any other third-party or scripting solution, web-server logs is the only reliable and exact source of tracking data, contains very request been made to your site.

Col. Shrapnel 2010-09-13 09:43:05

Thank you. That means I have old data too, excellent!

Majid 2010-09-13 09:48:59

@Majid not too much data. Logs usually being rotated, leaving you last week or month data only.

Col. Shrapnel 2010-09-13 09:54:20

That entirely depends on your webserver, what options it provides for htaccess overwrites.

For Apache, the access log logs what you are looking for http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/logs.html#accesslog but is not configurable via htaccess.

Kissaki 2010-09-13 09:43:11

ansaurus

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Using htaccess to track visitors?

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