DR. WEBSITE COLUMN
Of Hits and Links
Dear Dr. Website®: We currently run a Web site for our company and have been very pleased with the results. Lately, because of our newfound success, we've started helping other companies that need Web development assistance. Is it possible to set up a Web site domain on our Web server for another company, without their site having to be listed as a subdirectory under our site?
In order to offer this second company the ability to register their own domain and allow users to access their site by typing the URL in directly, you will have to be running another domain name server. Currently, this involves setting up a separate server root for your server, which means you need to run another HTTPD. Additionally, you will need to add another network card to your server to enable this domain.
Currently there are a number of companies that are working on so- called "virtual DNS" software which will allow you to run separate domains under the same HTTPD. One such company offering this software is Virtual Office, based in New York City. Their product, VirtualDNS, allows one to run multiple Web site URLs from the same server, with full protection set up between the various Web sites.
Dear Dr. Website®: I run a small Web site in Albuquerque, and recently we have had inquiries from advertisers who would like to place sponsorships on our site as to how many "hits" and "users" we have been getting. While we have no trouble measuring the number of hits to the site and the pages contained therein, we have not been able to tally the number of users that come to our Web site. This number is difficult to arrive at specifically because of ISPs that allocate IP addresses dynamically as well as by the commercial online services, which tend to cache frequently accessed Web pages on their server. Have you found any way to get around this roadblock?
The issue of the number of unique users that come to an individual Web site is a complicated, yet important, number. This number is most apt to represent the "readership" of a Web site as defined by traditional media terms.
Your problem in measuring this number is confounded by two factors: (1) your inability to account for users who browse your Web site using a different IP address each time, and (2) shielding from hits and any unique user IPs from the commercial online services.
The first problem is nearly impossible to solve. Users that have their IP addresses allocated dynamically will always appear to be one among a common group of IPs, thus blocking your ability to keep track of their accesses via reverse-mapping their IP address.
The second problem has come about as a result of the implementations the commercial online services and other organizations operating behind firewalls have chosen for their users. While there may be some speed-up for the end users of these services, it complicates the ability of a Web designer to keep track of these users. For example, you may notice occurrences such as:
[a-z]+[0-9]+-[0-9]+.compuserve.com piweba[0-9]y.prodigy.comin your log files, as well as numerous hosts with "proxy" in their names. These servers are acting as a gateway for numerous users, and unfortunately at this point there is no way to determine how many unique users the hits from these servers represent.The doctor recommends that you be open and frank with your prospective advertisers about this subject, and offer them info such as visits to a certain .html file they might like to sponsor, as well as the number of users who have taken links to advertisers' sites once that sponsorship is placed on a page. Trying to use elaborate formulas and estimates, as has been attempted by various Web sites and publications, will only serve to complicate the matter further. There are a number of software tools that are currently available to assist you in this analysis (see "Rushing to Fill Gap Left By 'Hits'" in the August 1995 issue of Web Week.)
Dear Dr. Website®: I'd like to include standard information on all of my pages, such as my corporate and copyright info, as well as the current date. Is there any way for me to add this information without copying it into every .html file?
Yes. What you will need to implement is something called a "server- side include." Simply put, you will need to run a small script that appends this information onto every page that is requested by your server. If you do not have access to your server's cgi-bin directory, then ask your site administrator for assistance.
Are you harried by HTML? Troubled about transparent GIFs? Send your design questions to Dr. Website at drweb@internet.com.
Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 1, Issue 5, September 1995
© internet.com Corporation All rights reserved. Keywords: design Date: 19950901
