Logging unique visitors

PHP programming forum. Ask questions or help people concerning PHP code. Don't understand a function? Need help implementing a class? Don't understand a class? Here is where to ask. Remember to do your homework!

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
johans0n
Forum Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2010 5:59 pm

Logging unique visitors

Post by johans0n »

Hello everyone,

The goal: Get daily unique visits on particular advertisements on my website.

In general i wanted to ask, I`ve looked around the web and people are suggesting various solutions. As i understand IP logging is not dependable e.g. there is one WAN IP address for 2 people behind a router, there are many utilities which help you to fake your IP, as well as most ISP`s use dynamic IP`s.
Another suggestion is to make a unique hash depending on IP address, OS, Browser etc., but I`m sure there are quite a few easy ways to send false user-agent headers etc. -> this method isn`t fool-proof aswell.

So i ask, is there even a method which would require a bit more knowledge than few tutorials over the web, to be bypassed?

Thanks in advance.
User avatar
califdon
Jack of Zircons
Posts: 4484
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:30 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Logging unique visitors

Post by califdon »

You should understand that nothing on the Internet is foolproof. Thinking that there is will lead to nothing but frustration. How important is it that your statistics are 100% accurate, vs. 97% accurate? You could use a cookie to see if a viewer has seen your ad before, but they could clear or block cookies, and even then, there could be several people in a household using the same computer. So there is no absolutely accurate method unless you require viewers to use a fingerprint scanner.
johans0n
Forum Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2010 5:59 pm

Re: Logging unique visitors

Post by johans0n »

Thanks for your replay. Mostly I wanted to make it clear, that there isn`t an allaround good method how you could accomplish this.
Post Reply