I am having an image call a php page and dumping their info into a mySQL db,

what should I track? IP, Time, # of visits... ?? It can eventually be used for a business.

thanks!!!

Where they've come from, what OS they're running, screen resolution, Browser (including version splits), if they've come from a search engine what search terms did they use, how many clicks have they made around your site, how long they spent on each page (using sessions), host mask (or at least the server they're coming through), date, time, not sure if you can do connection speed but i reckon it's possible.

How come you're calling it from an image? Seems a bit sneeky!

It will be in email form, they're 100% legal emails, they subscribe to the list, if I don't detect any views of the email, i'd like to unsubscribe them etc...
I don't really know of too many good ways to track people like this, the image thing would be handy for multiple items I figured.

test

The image is probably a good way to go. Even if you can't think of why you'd want a particular piece of information, you might in the future... I agree with leavethisplace that the more info you track, the better off you'll be. ((connection speed isn't a good idea - you'd likely have to test a fair sized file to estimate the connection speed, and that might annoy your visitors)).

I'd also point out that images might be limited - MS Outlook doesn't download images by default, and neither does Thunderbird.

Why don't you just add your tracking PHP code above your HTTP header in all of the pages you want to track and write it to a log file that you can look at whenever you want? You can add it to any pages and don't have to worry about images etc. or whether your users are registered or not. I use one on the site mentioned below, and it works like a charm.

Kaiman


Website Design and Hosting - Glenwood Springs, CO

Its all well and good saying oh store this and store that, but in the real world getting something from an email is pretty difficult unless you put it in there first.

<img src="http://your-site.com/weeklynewsletter.php?id=letter-002" width="1px" height="1px" style="display:none;">

As your embedded image script.

I have attempted loads of ways to get what I am after most all the $_SERVER vars you can get. Though they all gave the same information which just filled up the DB with nonsense.

So to get around this I started appending details to the fake images so:

<img src="http://your-site.com/weeklynewsletter.php?id=letter-002&user={id}" width="1px" height="1px" style="display:none;">

So now i can track what email campaign I am on, also with a bit of magic you can bang in the user id so that you can actually see which users open the email. Add to this some date stuff and your on your way.

So details collected.

S_SERVER vars all return the same so we can ommit them.

Add a email id to the fake image link. add the usr id to the fake image link.

on opening the email the link hits the server and return
A , the campaign ID (which email)
B, the user ID
C, date/timne of email opening.

Of course if you work some extra magic you can register your email llinks so you now can find out what sections of your emails are the most popular (then remove the crap).

With some imagination you can get allsorts going on.

A few notes though,

Lots of users will disallow emails with images in them (including fake ones).
It is sneeky no way about it
Fantastic for your sales and marketting team (numbers = sales after all).
Most of your users (providing your not hosting a GEEK site) will be unaware of your emmbeded fake image.

Have fun and share anything you find with us on this subject.

Cheers
Ibbo

Many services already do this and provide detailed statistics . To make a better one takes a lot of work and a "more simple" one won`t sell as better ones exist .

If you just want it for yourself ... you could use awstats or something else .

thank you!