excessive usage in one gallery

atomicfish · August 4, 2005

I have one Gallery http://atomicfish.smugmug.com/gallery/257292 that has has excessive usage for the last month or so, it has 17000 hits compared to every other gallery that has about a thousand, funny thing is it's only the 1st page so I am suspecting someone is linking to it . Not that I mind that as I still have plenty of bandwidth left but I would like to know what type of site and if they are using the images/galleries and making money with the site. Or if it's just a reptile enthusist (sp?) linking because he like the pictures. Any help on finding out would be appreciated.

jfriend · August 4, 2005

Some suggestions

atomicfish wrote:

I have one Gallery http://atomicfish.smugmug.com/gallery/257292 that has has excessive usage for the last month or so, it has 17000 hits compared to every other gallery that has about a thousand, funny thing is it's only the 1st page so I am suspecting someone is linking to it . Not that I mind that as I still have plenty of bandwidth left but I would like to know what type of site and if they are using the images/galleries and making money with the site. Or if it's just a reptile enthusist (sp?) linking because he like the pictures. Any help on finding out would be appreciated.

Some suggesions:

1) If you set up statcounter in your page customizations, you can find out the referring page for most of your hits. It won't help you if someone is direct linking to your images, but if they are linking to one of your pages, it will tell you where they are coming from. I've found it very educational about where my traffic is coming from. It has even shown me what Google searches have led people to my site. Go to http://www.statcounter.com/ and sign up for a free account. The free account is fully functional except the log size of history that it keeps is limited. I put the invisible JavaScript version into my page customization and it works like a charm.

2) If you suspect unauthorized direct linking, you can just turn off direct linking for that gallery in the customize gallery page.

3) If you just want to break the old links to stop the unauthorized linking, but still want the images in your gallery, you can re-upload the images to a newly named gallery (thus generating new links for the gallery and images), delete the old gallery and then change the name of the newly uploaded gallery to be the same as the old one.

--John

atomicfish · August 4, 2005

Thanks!
I like this idea... I have a standard account can I add the statcounter to that page? If so How do I do it (total newb when it comes to html/webpages)

jfriend wrote:

Some suggesions:

1) If you set up statcounter in your page customizations, you can find out the referring page for most of your hits. It won't help you if someone is direct linking to your images, but if they are linking to one of your pages, it will tell you where they are coming from. I've found it very educational about where my traffic is coming from. It has even shown me what Google searches have led people to my site. Go to http://www.statcounter.com/ and sign up for a free account. The free account is fully functional except the log size of history that it keeps is limited. I put the invisible JavaScript version into my page customization and it works like a charm.

muddyknees · August 5, 2005

You're kidding, no? Wondering why you would have exceptional traffic in a gallery with exceptionally interesting photos? You're about to get some more traffic - from Dgrin visitors, one instance being from my friends that are going to receive emails with links to your galleries. You don't want so much traffic? Reduce the quality of your photo's is one way! And don't drop links to your galleries in places like this!

Gary

atomicfish wrote:

I have one Gallery http://atomicfish.smugmug.com/gallery/257292 that has has excessive usage for the last month or so, it has 17000 hits compared to every other gallery that has about a thousand, funny thing is it's only the 1st page so I am suspecting someone is linking to it . Not that I mind that as I still have plenty of bandwidth left but I would like to know what type of site and if they are using the images/galleries and making money with the site. Or if it's just a reptile enthusist (sp?) linking because he like the pictures. Any help on finding out would be appreciated.

jfriend · August 5, 2005

You may need a power user account

atomicfish wrote:

Thanks!
I like this idea... I have a standard account can I add the statcounter to that page? If so How do I do it (total newb when it comes to html/webpages)

I'm not sure about this, but you may need a power user account in order to add a statcounter. I added it to my custom header which I think requires at least power user account (I have a pro account). It might be possible to put the statcounter code into your bio, but that would ONLY track people who land on your home page, not people who followed a link to one of your galleries. In order to track all of their progress through your site, you need the statcounter on every page which means it needs to be in the common header/footer.

--John

Richard · August 5, 2005

jfriend wrote:

... It might be possible to put the statcounter code into your bio, but that would ONLY track people who land on your home page, not people who followed a link to one of your galleries.
--John

Has anybody tried this? Does it violate the terms of service for a standard account?

jfriend · August 5, 2005

You'll have to ask smugmug yourself

rsinmadrid wrote:

Has anybody tried this? Does it violate the terms of service for a standard account?

You can put your own HTML code in a number of places. For example, you can put it in your Bio. You can put it in your gallery description, so it's probably possible to add the statcounter to an individual gallery page too by putting the HTML code into the gallery description.

Only the power or pro user accounts make it easy to add it to all your pages (which is needed to fully track a user through your site) by adding it to your header or footer.

I haven't read anything that says it's violates terms of service for a basic account nor can I understand why smugmug would be bothered by it, but if you want to know for sure, you should email help@smugmug.com for a more definitive answer since I'm only a customer and can't advise you on that topic.

--John

Richard · August 5, 2005

jfriend wrote:

You can put your own HTML code in a number of places. For example, you can put it in your Bio. You can put it in your gallery description, so it's probably possible to add the statcounter to an individual gallery page too by putting the HTML code into the gallery description.

Only the power or pro user accounts make it easy to add it to all your pages (which is needed to fully track a user through your site) by adding it to your header or footer.

I haven't read anything that says it's violates terms of service for a basic account nor can I understand why smugmug would be bothered by it, but if you want to know for sure, you should email help@smugmug.com for a more definitive answer since I'm only a customer and can't advise you on that topic.

--John

Thanks John. I don't see why it should bother them either, but perhaps they have marketing reasons to limit the functionality of basic accoounts even if their servers are not really involved. I never did understand marketing, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I think I will take your suggestion and send this along to them. I'll post their response when I get it.

Cheers.

Richard · August 5, 2005

rsinmadrid wrote:

Thanks John. I don't see why it should bother them either, but perhaps they have marketing reasons to limit the functionality of basic accoounts even if their servers are not really involved. I never did understand marketing, I'm afraid. Anyway, I think I will take your suggestion and send this along to them. I'll post their response when I get it.

Cheers.

I just got this response from Smugmug:

Hi Richard,

Thanks for contacting smugmug. Good luck with your statcounter! It's fine with us.
Best wishes,
-Robin

Now I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to get it to work

.

Cheers.

atomicfish · August 5, 2005

Thanks for checking into that and we are both in the same boat as to getting it to work...

jfriend · August 5, 2005

Some statcounter help

atomicfish wrote:

Thanks for checking into that and we are both in the same boat as to getting it to work...

All you have to do is copy the HTML/JavaScript code from the statcounter install page to the Bio text box and it should work for your home page.

As I said before, if you can't put it in your header or footer (requires a power user account to do so), you won't get page level tracking only tracking of people that view the page you have it in.

Here's their help page on installing the code: http://my4.statcounter.com/help/knowledge_base/Installation.html#KB14.

For those with power or pro accounts, I put the invisible counter in my header and it's working fine to track all my pages.

I think it's probably also possible to put the statcounter code into one or more gallery descriptions and get tracking of those galleries.

--John

rainforest1155 · August 5, 2005

You can't put html code in your bio. Some month ago I tried this, but it wouldn't work. html in gallery descriptions is fine though.

Sebastian

Richard · August 5, 2005

rainforest1155 wrote:

You can't put html code in your bio. Some month ago I tried this, but it wouldn't work. html in gallery descriptions is fine though.

Sebastian

Hmmm...I did manage to get the Javascript into a gallery description, but while it displayed fine in the gallery (ie, it was not visible) it was visible next to the gallery thumb on my home page. I have not tried it yet with pure HTML as the Statcounter folks warn that pure HTML gives only limited data. I am hoping someone else reading this thread can point me in the right direction. So far, I have only used the default code generated by Statcounter.

dunno

jfriend · August 5, 2005

Only limited HTML in the Bio

rainforest1155 wrote:

You can't put html code in your bio. Some month ago I tried this, but it wouldn't work. html in gallery descriptions is fine though.

Sebastian

Yeah, they are only allowing limited HTML in the Bio like links and formatting. You can't get <script> tags in there.

It may be worth ugprading to the power user account if you want to do this.

--John

XO-Studios · August 5, 2005

jfriend wrote:

Yeah, they are only allowing limited HTML in the Bio like links and formatting. You can't get <script> tags in there.

It may be worth ugprading to the power user account if you want to do this.

--John

I have statcounter but with a pro account and you can put it either in your header or footer and it will show each and every page and what the traffic is/was.

FWIW,

XO,

Baldy · August 5, 2005

WHOA! No wonder people are linking to it! Those are some amazing images.

Back when we had fewer subscribers and traffic, we used to dig through the logs and see where the traffic was comng from and I can remember some exotic fish that were linked to Korean message boards. The traffic was amazing on those boards and I don't know what they were saying about those fish, but they must have liked them. A lot.

Now that we have over a million visitors and a billion database queries/day, it's seriously time-consuming to dig in and figure out where the heck the links are coming from. Sorry about that.

GREAPER · August 5, 2005

If they are hits to your gallery, great, more traffic for you. If they are the result of somone imbedding your images in their pages by linking to them, they are stealing both your images and your bandwidth.

You might try imbedding the html for the stat counter in an image caption. I know some htkl works there.

This would allow you to track each image, but it would be a lot of hassle.

Just a thought.

jfriend · August 5, 2005

Lemon into lemonade?

Baldy wrote:

Now that we have over a million visitors and a billion database queries/day, it's seriously time-consuming to dig in and figure out where the heck the links are coming from.

Maybe we should take this lemon and make some lemonade out of it. It would be really cool for smugmug to capture referrer links on my galleries and offer me a log of the last 100 or so referrers. I'm not asking for the full functionality of something like statcounter, but just an idea of where my viewers are coming from. It could be a nice feature for the power user account. It is really cool to be able to see how people found your images. In mine, I find the expected dgrin and dpreview origins, but statcounter also shows me exactly what Google searches landed on my page which is quite educational when understanding where visitors are coming from. If I was really trying to sell images, this info would be invaluable in understanding where my traffic was coming from and which promotional sources were working or not working.

Food for thought on the smugmug priority list...

--John

Richard · August 7, 2005

Update on StatCounter

jfriend wrote:

Yeah, they are only allowing limited HTML in the Bio like links and formatting. You can't get <script> tags in there.

It may be worth ugprading to the power user account if you want to do this.

--John

Well, it took a bit of fiddling (and some help from the StatCounter user forum) but I have managed to get it working in my gallery descriptions.

Everything looks fine within the gallery, but unfortunately some of the code became visible next to the thumbs on my home page. I managed to kludge a solution by making my gallery descriptions long enough to invoke the ...[more] tag. This left my home page a little less clean than it used to be. I have still not had any luck in getting it to work in the home page bio, however.

I think John is probably right. If you want to do this, you ought to upgrade from the standard account. I am still saving for a 20D

, and need to watch my expenses for now.

If anyone needs help in setting this up on a standard account, PM me and I will try to assist.

Cheers,

asd · August 7, 2005

rsinmadrid wrote:

Well, it took a bit of fiddling (and some help from the StatCounter user forum) but I have managed to get it working in my gallery descriptions. Everything looks fine within the gallery, but unfortunately some of the code became visible next to the thumbs on my home page. I managed to kludge a solution by making my gallery descriptions long enough to invoke the ...[more] tag. This left my home page a little less clean than it used to be. I have still not had any luck in getting it to work in the home page bio, however.

I think John is probably right. If you want to do this, you ought to upgrade from the standard account. I am still saving for a 20D , and need to watch my expenses for now.

If anyone needs help in setting this up on a standard account, PM me and I will try to assist.

Cheers,

If you don't mind losing the album's description next to its thumbnail, I believe you can turn on Clean mode for your album - then the description, Last Updated, and javascript won't be displayed on any pages listing that album. The album's description will still show up when you're browsing the album.

Statcounter is great.

Richard · August 7, 2005

asd wrote:

If you don't mind losing the album's description next to its thumbnail, I believe you can turn on Clean mode for your album - then the description, Last Updated, and javascript won't be displayed on any pages listing that album. The album's description will still show up when you're browsing the album.

Statcounter is great.

Thanks for the tip, ASD. I hadn't paid attention to what the clean option did before. I just applied it to all my galleries. It's a bit Spartan, but I think it looks better than all that text did.

excessive usage in one gallery

Comments