Big thanks to Lee and Log Question

Hi all,

I just wanted to send out a big thanks to Lee (and everyone associated with this board really, but especially to Lee because he goes above and beyond to help everyone out).

The advice and help that I get here is invaluable. I don't know where I'd be without it. I try to put as much back as I can, but most times I feel I take more than I'm able to give.

I've just been looking through my logs and noticed a lot of traffic coming from a Japanese site. I clicked the link and the mo-fo was hotlinking my preview images. So, with Lee's help from an e-mail a couple of weeks ago, I applied a new htaccess rule, uploaded, and presto, this Japanese thief is now serving broken links.

So thanks again Lee and Gary, this board is an invaluable resource to us all.

Question: How much time do you all spend looking over your logs? With everything I have to do, sometimes I don't get to them at all, but after noticing this thief (and I've found others in the past) I'm tending to think I'd better make this a daily thing.

Cheers
Dzinerbear

I have to admit i check our server stats once or twice a day collectively however, overall it takes me no more than 2 or 3 minutes because of the stats setup we have on our servers :)

We are actually about to upgrade our stats package too to a custom one that will email me daily and weekly stats automatically based on referring urls and what is being hit on the server / domain that will help to no end :)

Regards,

Lee

I spend time looking at my logs regularly. I closely monitor my daily hits, and also the search terms people use to click into the site. I also typically glance over to see what referring url's are linking to me.

That's just the regular stuff. I'll also go to them several times a month for special projects. For example, the only pop-up that I run on my porn site is as small ad for my newsletter. I only want that to run however on the top 3 or 4 most popular inside pages which are read by First Time Virgins to my site.

Using this method I snag the new folks visiting the site, who I wish to keep returning in the future with my newsletters. Obviously I need not waste marketing space to people who visit regularly.

Of course, in order to really complete this marketing flow I need to do some newsletters :P (Which I say every week I'm going to sit down a write - oh well...)

Steve

Hey Dzinerbear,

Keeping track of where you're traffic is coming from is one of the most important things you can do.

I always advise my clients to know your traffic like the back of your hand because your traffic is the base of your income.

We've gotten many sites hotlinking to our pages, our individual images, to galleries, and handle each one according to how it can best benefit us. Sometimes we use htaccess, sometimes we redirect the traffic, or replace a page with something else. People stealing your content/pages can sometimes be turned into something beneficial depending on the circumstance.