Tagging IP Addresses and Myspace Users

A Powerful Feature

One of the most useful features that has been added to the WunderCounter over the past year or so is the IP Tagging feature. At the very least, I should say that it's one of the features which I personally find very useful. I use the WunderCounter to track my own web traffic, so I hope that when I find a feature to be useful, there are lots of you who feel the same way. What clued me in to the importance of IP Tagging is that despite the fact that I added this feature without including any kind of documentation, there were already users tagging IPs within about 5 minutes of the feature being available. That's pretty powerful stuff.

How Does it Work?

Here's how it works. When you log in to you account and view your log files, you should see a column with IP addresses. You'll see a link beside each IP address which is (appropriately) labelled "tag". Click this link and you'll be able to tag your IP. How should you tag an IP? Well, it's really just a nickname or some identifier of your choice. It's hard to look at an IP and say, "that's my friend Dave". So, when you see an IP number come up which you may happen to know is Dave's you can tag with his name. The result is that, in future, when you view your log files, you'll see Dave's name along with his IP number. It makes log files easier to scan and a lot more fun.

A Practical Example

Here's how I use tagging. Whenever you log in to the WunderCounter, I automatically tag your IP with your username. That way, when people email me and say, "I had problems with this feature", I can just view my log reports and follow that user's tags. It makes it a lot easier to figure out what is going on. Auto-tagging is not yet available for users other than myself, but I will make it available via the API if enough people bug me about it. As an aside, if there's something you really want to see, please bug me about it. It may take a fair amount of nagging, but the more you get in my face, the more likely I'll be to add your future. Maybe I'll post an article in future about how to get your feature added, but for now, just let me know what you'd like to see. IP Tagging was a user request and you can see how useful that is for everybody.

Tagging Myspace Usernames

If you're using the WunderCounter to track your Myspace profile, you should consider tagging IPs with the Myspace usernames of your friends. Since it's not possible to automatically associate an IP with a Myspace username, this is the next best thing. You may be able to do this by checking what time friends leave comments on your page and matching this against hits in your log files. Try it out -- you'll be surprised at what you can discover.

Managing Your Tags

Once you have created tags, you may want to alter or delete them. To do so, choose:

"Options" -> "IP Tagging" from your dashboard page. To edit a tag name, just hover over it and click on the name. You'll be able to change the tag name and save it without needing to refresh the page. To remove a tag entirely, just use the "delete" link to the right of the tag.

It's that simple. If you haven't used this feature yet, I encourage you to try it out as soon as you can. It will make your tracking that much more enjoyable!