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How often does Google Analytics update?

Wed, 02 May 2007 00:12:25 GMT

I have often wondered how often Google Analytics updates and I set out to find that out today. One thing you need to keep in mind, regardless of how often it updates or refreshes, is that the best time to view your stats is the next day. You will notice that if you check your stats at 2-3 am it will account for every hour, but when you view the stats at around noon, the actual number of visits and keywords used to reach your site has risen.

Google claims the data is updated every 24 hours, but the true number I have reached is about every half hour to hour the data is update. I believe the number to be close to an hour as Google Adsense has about an hour of lag in data (Google Adsense can show real time, just some times you may experience an hour in lag as to keep the report as accurate as possible. A lot of data has to be compiled with both services, and with the immense number of customers, you can't get it all in real time.)

If you want more information on Google Analytics, try visiting google.com/analytics. There are many helpful hints and tips for using the tracking software inside their FAQ, and many many people have written some very good information about the free software. If your using something other than Google Analytic, you should really consider switching unless your are dealing with very large amounts of data that you need to store, as Google Analytics versus a corporate solution would be silly when you have over 10,000 uniques a day.

All I want for Christmas: Real Time Google Analytics

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 02:37:06 GMT

I honestly would love a premium version of Google Analytics that allowed you to see your stats in real time. $10-20 a month would be well worth it. Though I don't think Google charges for any of their products or services, with the exception of Adwords. I'm not actually familiar with Urchin (Google bought Urchin and made it into analytics) so I do not know if that was a host your self service with real time stats, or what. Google Analytics is such an awesome piece of software it is a shame that they cannot make a premium version with realtime stats. Google needs to take analytics to the real time level but I know it will probably never happen. If they had a premium versions, companys with sites with over 5,000,000 pageviews a month would not have to have an active adwords account to use Google Analytics, they would just pay the monthly fee and how could google still impose the page view limit with someone paying for the service?

Google.. if you guys see this.. maybe you could make my account real time some how? Thx

Here are some unusual / interesting analytics stats of this blog from the last 3 days:

114 visits both yesterday and today...

Joomla or Wordpress

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:09:15 GMT

I always see the question "Should I use wordpress or joomla?"... You need to understand that Wordpress is made for blogging, and joomla is made for content management (though both can be used for either blogging or content management)... Using wordpress as a website or portal may be a nice little trick, but your not going to get much from it like you would if you used joomla. If you used Joomla as a blog, it's a bit heavy and will hog resources you shouldn't be hogging. You will also miss out on all the cool plugins and a lot more. So.. If you want a blog, go with wordpress. If you want a CMS, go with Joomla. Just cause you blog on wordpress doesn't mean your portal needs to also run wordpress.

Also, don't limit yourself to just wordpress and joomla. There is opensourcecms.com and hotscripts.com for us lazy folk who can't code for crap but need software quick.

Moving large mySQL databases

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:37:59 GMT

If you've ever had to move databases that were way too big for phpmyadmin, and didn't have shell access or what not, you can use Big Dump. bigdump is a php file that will allow you to upload a database dump of any size by breaking it into smaller chunks... All you have to do is upload bigdump.php to your server, enter your database info, the location of your sql dump (needs to also be uploaded to your server, and uncompressed), and then point your browser to bigdump. Easy as hell, and only takes a second. You can even upload 2mb-3mb databases using this method faster than you can through phpmyadmin.

Download bigdump...

http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php

phpLD hates me

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 05:42:16 GMT

So for the last 2 days I have been trying to install phpLD 2.0 on a subdomain. The server is am trying to install this on is a VPS running Linux/Plesk/PHP 5.04. Each time I upload it and try to go to the install directory, all i get is a blank page. When I view the source, I see the basic html but nothing in between the body tags. I have confirmed that PHP is operating properly on the server//subdmain.

Here is a breakdown of what I did to install phpLD:

Created subdomain "directory" via plesk

Uploaded files to /subdomains/directory/httpdocs/

CHMOD'd all files per INSTALL.txt (did experiment yesterday in which i CHMOD'd EVERY last file to 777)

Directed browser to http://directory.myurl.com/ , which redirects to http://directory.myurl.com/install/index.php .

Starred at a blank page

I have of course tried going directly to the page using all browsers on this computer (FF, IE7, IE6), and by proxify.com

This is driving me nuts. I'm going to try the manual install tomorrow if I can't find an answer on any forums. I'm not understanding why there is a blank page?? :-(

I had to install wordpress on a plesk/linux/php 5.0.4 subdomain created in plesk earlier this week and it didn't give me any trouble at all.. so I know it's not the sub domain that is the problem.

UPDATE: One of the reasons for getting this blank install page was the fact that phplinkdirectory 's website has only phpLD 2.0 available for download, you need to go to their forum to find the download for phpLD 2.1, and visit this thread which links to the phpLD 2.1 download: http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6404

phpLD 2.1 install instructions are available within the thread

Nameserver Suckage

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 22:09:53 GMT

So I have to move a clients site to a new server, which isn't normally a problem. All the files and databases have been backed up, I just need to change the name servers. Up until this month, any time I changed a sites name servers, the change would reflect immediately in my browser. Now my ISP has decided that it needs to make me wait 24 hours until they refresh their DNS cache. I believe this is how it works anyways.. I can go to an anonymous browser and see the plesk config page, but in my browser I am still taken to the old site. I have tried flushing the DNS cache on my computer with no luck. It's really irritating as this is a site that I can not have any down time on. Now, last week I had to change another sites name servers and move the files, so I had to go war drive with my laptop until I found a wireless network. This would work this week but the site is about 36mb on disk and my laptops charging cord broke so I have no juice (the little pin fell out, long story).

Is there a way to force your computer to use a different name server for a site? Just using an anonymous browser won't do it because it would take a week to upload 36 mb through a browser, so I need the change to reflect throughout my computer.

Better yet, being the noob that I am, maybe there is a way to upload to a plesk site before the name servers changes take effect? Like through the servers ip? Something like ftp://72.22.**.**/client/sitename/httpdocs/ ? Or something?

Oh, and about plesk, what folder is the stupid favicon stored in? I have a lot of clients using plesk VPS's/Dedicated and I'm sick of moving 10 or so sites there and then having to manually remove all the favicons it inserts. Some said use shell and go to xxx folder and you can remove it entirely?

okay I'm done ranting/whinning

Testing The Blog

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:43:56 GMT

This will be the text on your new blog entry. You can paste designs from Dreamweaver or MSWord or even other web pages.

Just testing out the blogging and commenting system, also the archiving system?