[development] Compiling Drupal statistics

[Angela Byron]

Walt Daniels wrote:
> The number of active installations is going to be really hard to get right,
> at least if others behave as I do. I have 14 installs that are probably in
> your count but only 7 of them are real sites with outside users. The others
> are all test or build sites. They aren't even visible enough to attract
> spammers. But perhaps I only get a count of one, because I have a copy of
> 5.7 that I ftp to a site to get it started. I don't get a new copy for each
> site.
> 
> Perhaps there could be some module that is installed as part of core that
> makes something visible enough to Google that you can use a count of it to
> count active installs. Then ask people who install test accounts to turn off
> that module. Put a message in the Status report that forces admins to at
> least visit a page and given the opportunity to get it right.

That'd be the "Powered by Drupal" block that was added in 6.

And I think that test accounts are valid Drupal installations. Certainly 
any "foobar-just-testing-this-out.wordpress.com" gets counted as a valid 
WordPress installation. And if they're *really* throwaway sites (like my 
local dev environments for patch-testing purposes), you probably don't 
have cron setup on them, in which case they won't report here more than 
once when they're initially setup.

Furthermore, if we get a couple of extra hits, it'll make up for those 
sites (mass-hosted, paranoid people, 5.x and below, etc.) that are not 
using the update status module for security and thus not reporting here.

So yeah, gotta say I'm not too worried about it. :) It's just a figure 
to use to spot trends, that's all.

-Angie