URL to your eFiction: http://www.gallifreyandreams.com/index.php
Version of eFiction: 3.5
Have you bridged eFiction, if so with what?: No
Version of PHP: 2.11.9.3
Version of MySQL: 5.0.16
Have you searched for your problem: Yes
If so, what terms did you try: Read count
State the nature of your problem: The read counts on the stories archived on my site are way off. We haven't gone public yet, have very few members, and the counts go up to a ridiculous number (ridiculous considering no one knows about the site really) within minutes of posting a new story. We've tried recalibrating the site (all of the options) and that didn't seem to help any. I know we can go in and change the counts manually in the database and this would help for the stories already up, but I'd like for there to be an accurate count for members once we do go public.
Do you have a test account for us? Yes. Name: Testy Password: efiction
Thanks!
In the admin panel, have you used the recalculation tools under maintenance?
archive:
site:
Available for skin/mod commission! 🙂
https://efiction.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Number_of_X_Not_Displaying_Correctly
We've tried this already, multiple times, and it hasn't done anything. Regardless, even if it did fix them at this point, the concern is still there that once we've gone public, it'll continue to skewing read results.
What numbers are off exactly? I checked the numbers of your members and authors to the actual listings and they seem fine. As for the stories, its currently 10 stories per page and you have about 12 pages, so the current number (112) doesn't seem that off either when I browse by title.
What numbers are off exactly? I checked the numbers of your members and authors to the actual listings and they seem fine. As for the stories, its currently 10 stories per page and you have about 12 pages, so the current number (112) doesn't seem that off either when I browse by title.
It's the read count on the stories. For instance, every single one of mine has a count of at least 5, when I know for a fact that almost all of them were not viewed at all, much less 5-25 times.
What numbers are off exactly? I checked the numbers of your members and authors to the actual listings and they seem fine. As for the stories, its currently 10 stories per page and you have about 12 pages, so the current number (112) doesn't seem that off either when I browse by title.
I'm co-mod on the site, butting in here. The counts of how many times a story has been viewed is completely off. I have one story, multi-chaptered, that had/has 88 views. It appeared that way almost as soon as I uploaded it, and I know for a fact it hasn't been viewed that many times. Most of the current members are people who've already read that fic and, regardless, wouldn't have all rushed to do so as soon as I posted it. All of our fics have ridiculous read counts, and we'd like to fix this before we open. We'd like accurate numbers.
Recalculating in Admin didn't help.
Optimizing in the database doesn't help. We can reset these one at a time for each story, but that's hardly an option that'll fix anything after we open.
One quick thing: the version you post for PHP is actually for PHPMyAdmin, the control panel when you access your server. Your version of PHP is probably either 4.x or 5.x. I'm only saying because it might make a difference for figuring out your issue.
Secondarily, do you have access to traffic logs? Is your site being crawled by tons of bots, maybe? I think that would up the counts. The numbers seem a little high for that, but it's probably worth checking. If you think there's an insane amount of crawlage, you can try modulating it with a robots.txt file.
One quick thing: the version you post for PHP is actually for PHPMyAdmin, the control panel when you access your server. Your version of PHP is probably either 4.x or 5.x. I'm only saying because it might make a difference for figuring out your issue.
Secondarily, do you have access to traffic logs? Is your site being crawled by tons of bots, maybe? I think that would up the counts. The numbers seem a little high for that, but it's probably worth checking. If you think there's an insane amount of crawlage, you can try modulating it with a robots.txt file.
Yes we do have access to our traffic logs, which show the daily traffic at about 1,600 visitors a day. Is there a way to tell by looking at the logs whether or not it's bots causing most of the hits? The only thing with that though is, as Sinecure stated before, she had 88 hits on one of her stories almost immediately after posting it. Could bots have done that?
We'll give the robots.txt file a try and see if that helps any.
I don't know if it could be bots, it's just something I'm throwing out there. A count jumping up that much is possible if you had some crawling going on when it was posted, but it does sounds a little high.
Through my cPanel I have access to a couple of different types of traffic logs that breaks it down in a more raw, list form, and another that has a section about browsers/agents.
Anyway, the "Latest Visitors", which shows the last 300, will shows an entry like this:
Host: 66.249.70.239
/robots.txt
Http Code: 404 Date: Mar 31 07:08:27 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; + http://www.google.com/bot.html)
/ossabaw/detail/detail_003.html
Http Code: 200 Date: Mar 31 07:08:27 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 760
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; + http://www.google.com/bot.html)
So as you can see, this is Google crawling part of my domain. You'll want to check out the agents. They're usually pretty obvious that they're crawlbots, because they have to be by law, I think. Of course, then there's always illegal stuff.
Anyway, it might not be bots causing your count issue, but I thought it was worth a shot.
If you have 1,600 hits on a site that's not open, there is probably something wrong. Even bots won't visit you that much. How many people are currently working on the site?
Definitely check your logs to see if you can figure out where the traffic is coming from.
ETA: I looked at your site and I think your read counts are right. I clicked around and it only added one count for every chapter I looked at. The thing you have to remember is that it counts a read for every hit a story gets, even when you are uploading it. That's at least two or three for each chapter(one for the preview, one when you post, and possibly one when you enter the text in.) If you have a validation queue, then clicking on the story there will add more counts. At any rate, it doesn't seem to be malfunctioning. It's just the way it works. If it bothers you, you can remove the read counts. I don't there is an easy way to fix it. A cookie would have to be stored and then you'd have to check the count against the cookies before the count was added to the database. I think this might really slow your site down (but I'm not positive.)
It's possible that it could also be spam bots, not just the regular search engine bots.
