Getting to know you! How analytics lets me know who you are.

June 12, 2007 ·

I am sure lots of people use google analytics on their site to track usage. Its very good for conversion funnels and what have you but it doesn't really have the immediate effect of reporting that I like for blog posts. I have to admit, I am a nosey bugger. I want to know when people are coming to my blog and what they are looking at. I want to know WHO is on my site, I know you dont mind, of course, its only me knowing this stuff right.... right? So, I have been using a service called reInvorate for a long while. It was beta, closed down, become beta again. It has a great feature of showing you who is on your site at the present moment, which is fine if you like knowing that everyone is called "X88893-333-5555"... but if you are using Ray "The Jedi" Camden's BlogCFC, people can ask for the website to remember their details. Now on a tangent, ReInvigorate have released a little tool for Windows and Mac called Snoop which simply displays people coming onto your site. The problem is that they are still pretty anonymous, but I checked something out over at the ReInvigorate site about adding names to these sessions And it turns out that its pretty easy to do it in BlogCFC, you just have to add the following code before the call to ReInvigorate:

<cfif isDefined("cookie.blog_name")>
var re_name_tag = "#blog_name#";
</cfif>
<cfif isDefined("cookie.blog_email")>
var re_context_tag="mailto:#cookie.blog_email#";
</cfif>
re_("your_reInvigorate_id");

And then you can finally see who is coming to your site. Nice to see you again too! :)

Tags: blogging · coldspring · webdev

8 responses

1 Scott P // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

puts tin-foil hat on....
2 Mark Drew // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

I just like to greet my guests properly :)
3 joshua cyr // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

Reminds me a bit of visitorville.com but less like a game and better customization.
4 Raymond Camden // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

I'd be willing to bet I could build something like this w/ Apollo and BlogCFC.
5 James, F.E. // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

@Ray - is there anything you *can't* build?
6 Raymond Camden // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

hey, it isn't me. It is CF being so darn easy. And Apollo, um, AIR, is pretty simple too.
7 Mark Drew // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

I guess its kinda scary, but these are things I can find out from my analytics engine anyway, I just like that I can see it real time (and also keep an eye on my developers!) ;)
8 Ciqala // Sep 22, 2008 at 4:11 PM

but mark you can keep an eye on us from your desk... i think you just like new toys. :)

Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

a compendium of railo, cfml, cfeclipse and technology topics