"Spy" on visitors

[PL]

A couple of years ago I read an article about how to create a visitor
tracking system in ASP.NET that actually allowed you to see the content
that was being served to the visitor.

I can't seem to find that article now so I was wondering if anyone
has heard about it or know a finished system that could be used ?

It may seem offensive to "spy" on visitors but it's our server and to be able
to see what pages are requested and see the whole chain when someone
enters the site would be extremely useful when making design decisions.

I know logfiles could be used but designers don't like statistics ;-) this would
be a visual tracking system that would greatly exceed what you could get
out of logfiles.

PL.

 

[Mr Newbie]

Depends what information you are looking for. I designed a system using
Domino a couple of years ago which logged everything including the messages
users sent to each other, why, because thats what the customer wanted. Its
not that they wanted to spy on every message or event, but it meant that if
a situation warranted it then an audit trail existed.

Its a matter of defining the parameters of your requirments and then
designing them in. Obviously logging takes time and resources, and this is a
tradeoff against performance.

My Advice is to think hard about how the information will be used and of
what value it has, if you can justify its use, then code it in.

 

[PL]

Thank you for your input, I was more thinking about a system that allows the tracking of the "flow"
through the site visually, meaning you could startup a browser, connect to a specific port on your server,
and follow a specific session around when he or she clicked and viewed the site.

Apart from the cool factor of a visual tracking system like this it is actually a very useful design
tool since you can see what the visistors do on the site, of course I understand it would only show
content served by the server and anything posted back but that would still be very useful.

PL.

 

[Mr Newbie]

I can see the voyer trait in this but fail to see its usefulness. I mean,
are you really going to track people in real time looking around the site ?

I would have thought it far more usefull to log the progress through the
site to and see how this goes in a more managed way, but to want to see it
live is a bit strange

--
Best Regards

The Inimitable Mr Newbie º¿º

Thank you for your input, I was more thinking about a system that allows
the tracking of the "flow"
through the site visually, meaning you could startup a browser, connect
to a specific port on your server,
and follow a specific session around when he or she clicked and viewed the
site.

Apart from the cool factor of a visual tracking system like this it is
actually a very useful design
tool since you can see what the visistors do on the site, of course I
understand it would only show
content served by the server and anything posted back but that would still
be very useful.

PL.

 

[PL]

I don't consider letting the designers follow the flow of a user through their pages on their server
as being weird.

As I said logs only go so far and designers do not read logfiles or statistics no matter how
much you want them to.

Of course they wouldn't sit there all day and look at individual visitors, it's more a question of making
sure the flow of the site is as intended instead of guessing.

I don't think you have anything useful to add here, do you work in the business at all ? Do you manage large sites ?

Coming back to the intial question, did anyone else see this article or have anything useful to add or is this
just a wannabee forum ?

Thank you.

PL.

 

[Mr Newbie]

Obviously you didn't read my post accurately; attention to detail is very
important, you really must remember that.

Just because you have a view, does not mean it constitutes the most
efficient or effective way to approach a problem. The idea behind a public
forum like this is to get the views of others to help you to make the most
informed choice regarding your design.

I have got some ideas on how you could accomplish this, but your right,
given your comments, I don't have anything more to add.

I'm sure the outcome of your project will be in line with the way you have
conducted both the project and yourself.

Good Luck!

;-D

 

[Showjumper]

There is a Who's On application described in the book ASP.NET Unleashed. It
allows you to see whos viewing what page and hwre they came from. For
example, if i wanted to see who was on http://mysite.com/default.aspx i
would naviagte to http://mysite.com/default.axd
I think this how it worked. Maybe this helps