[drupal-devel] ShortStat for Drupal

[Chris Messina]

It's not so much that I'm worried about writing browser detection into
the theme layer as I am catering to browsers which my audience doesn't
use. Check out this post for more information:

<snip>
Last month, I had posed the question: When can we hide from IE5/Win?.
In retrospect, I probably should've titled the entry: When can I hide
from IE5/Win?. Because, as others have rightfully pointed out, *what
matters most are the statistics from your own site, not others.*
</snip>

http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2005/01/12/clarification.html

So the broader topic here, which is important to me and my audience,
is about giving the kind of wider statistical information to the user
that might normally get stuck in third-party stats packages.

You may have these packages and know how to use them, but a gross
majority of Drupal users a) won't have access or the means to see
these stats b) won't be able to install these packages (ie hosted
installs) c) won't want to go to a separate place to find out how
their website is performing.

With all due respect, I understand where you guys are coming from and
saying that Drupal should report on Drupal, but I do think that the
watchdog module is somewhat limited to a more general audience that
may not have access to third party solution (for whatever reason).

Therefore, if I can find someone to help code, I will gladly help
reform the current watchdog module into something a little more
robust, nimble and Tuftesque.

Any takers?

Chris

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:54:38 +1100, Gordon Heydon <gordon at heydon.com.au> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> * Morbus Iff (morbus at disobey.com) wrote:
> > >Implementing stuff like browser detection can be annoying, as you need
> > >to keep its database up to date to the latest browser releases. The best
> > >solution would be to find a good reference set that is easy to import
> > >and kept up-to-date. Though I agree with Moshe that Drupal's stats
> > >module should mainly be for Drupal-related stats. Webalizer tells me the
> >
> > I'll +1 to this. The current stats are great for a quickie eyeball of
> > today's stats, but if I really want something "professional", I'll just
> > depend on my weekly analog stuff, which never gets deleted.
> 
> I think that the one thing that core should do is for watchdog to
> capture additional information such as the browser identifcation string,
> and just store it in the watchdog file.
> 
> Then some bright spark can write a contribution module that formats the
> stats to get this information.
> 
> As for browser detection, drupal should not do this at all. If they
> theme is that complex, then you can do browser detection in your theme
> to get around the problems.
> --
> Gordon Heydon <gordon at heydon.com.au>
>