More Browsers are Now Recognized in Browser Reports

I've just deployed some improvements to a couple of reports.  Firstly, I've moved the Browser page away from some custom code I had written and over to using https://metacpan.org/pod/HTTP::BrowserDetect  This means that more browsers are now recognized and newer browsers and bots are more likely to be recognized in future.

Also, I've tweaked the Referring URL reports to take more traffic into account.  I think these will now provide a more accurate representation of which referring URLs are driving the most traffic to your sites.

Status of Reports

After Sunday morning's database changes, some of the reports are not functioning.  I'm working to resolve this.  Some of the reports will be online again later on Monday.  I'll work to sort out any remaining issues after that.  I had some issues come up which didn't appear in my development environment, so I'm fixing those.  The good news is that it's giving me a chance to gut some older code which I hadn't gotten around to cleaning up, so I'll get that out of the way while I implement these fixes.

Planned Downtime 2014-08-10

There's almost never any planned WunderCounter downtime, but tomorrow I need to migrate one of the databases to some new hardware. It would be hard to do this without downtime and still keep all of the numbers in sync, so there will be a short period of downtime tomorrow (August 10), probably between 7 and 10 AM EST.  It could be up to 20 minutes, but may well be less than 10.  Both the main WunderCounter site and the reporting area will be offline during this time.

This is necessary to get the databases of some aging equipment to a new server with SSDs and 8 times the amount of RAM which the database servers currently have.  The rest of the migration will take place slowly over the next week or two and shouldn't have any noticeable downtime.  Once that is complete you should see a boost in speed when accessing reports etc.

Browser Blocking Fixed

Browser blocking was accidentally disabled by a recent upgrade and several people have reported the bug.  I've just deployed a fix for this.  As part of the change I rewrote a lot of the internals and also added a lot of tests to ensure that future deployments go more smoothly.

If you notice any issues with browser blocking or anything else, please let me know.

If you want to enable browser blocking, you can do so via the links on your "Account Options" page, which can be found under the "Options" menu.

Dropping Support for MSIE 6, 7 and 8

I'm just in the process of redesigning members.wundercounter.com and I've made the decision to go with Bootstrap v3.0.0  This means the site will be mobile friendly right from the start, look better and be easier for me to develop and maintain.  That's the good news.  The bad news (for a very small number of you) will be that anything under Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (ie MSIE 6, 7 and 8) will no longer be supported.  I currently have some hacks in place to support these older browsers but the browsers are becoming less popular with every passing day and supporting them would mean holding everyone else back.

If you're still on an older version of MSIE, please upgrade when you can or, even better, download a more standards-compliant browser like Google Chrome or Firefox.  You'll thank me!

New Hardware

You may have noticed that the reporting has become a bit faster over the last couple of months.  I've moved members.wundercounter.com to brand new hardware.  I've quadrupled the RAM from 8 to 32 GB and the CPU is significantly faster.  I've also compressed the assets (CSS and JavaScript) to improve the page load speeds.

World Maps are Back

World maps are now back on your dashboard page (if you're not viewing on a mobile device).  They're generated daily, so they'll be an accurate reflection of where your traffic is coming from.  You can click on the map image to get a higher resolution (bigger) image to view.

Improved Browser and Robot Identification

This past week I've upgraded the logic used to identify browsers and operating systems.  You should find more information in your log reports as well as more robots which are identified.  If you find missing or incorrect information, please let me know.

The WunderCounter is based heavily on open source software and the logic behind the browser identification is freely available here.

Browser, Operating System and Device Icons

As of this evening, I've added some icons to the daily and page reports.  They cover popular browsers, operating systems as well as handheld devices (iOS and Android).  I've also switched to a more up to date browser parsing library.  I'll be checking the logs over the next little while and tweaking the icons and display values, but I also welcome any feedback on the look and accuracy of the new information.  Please feel free to contact me with any issues you may find, even if you think they're unimportant.  Every report (good or bad) is helpful.

Database Server Crash (2013-03-05)

Earlier today the master database server crashed.  I don't know why it did, but when it came back online it took several hours to recover.  The slave server remained online during this time and is in good health.

I've learned a few things from this experience:

• I need to prune a number of tables in the database as this could greatly reduce the amount of data being stored and replicated.
• You can disable Debian's default of checking all tables on MySQL restart.  When tables have many millions of rows, even a fast table check can create a bottleneck which prevents new rows from being inserted into these tables and then ties up available database connections etc.
• I need to consider upgrading the database hardware.

So, things are back to normal for now.  There were some outages this evening (March 5), but they weren't extreme and a lot of data continued to be tracked in the meantime.  This kind of crash hasn't happened in probably the last 3 years, so it took me by surprise, but at least I'm not up all night trying to recover from a disaster.

I apologize for the downtime.  I hate it at least as much as you do.  Having said that, the WunderCounter's uptime is actually very, very good in general.  There are very few outages and I generally just trust that it's going to be available, since it has historically performed so solidly.  However, I'll be implementing the lessons learned from today so that I'll be able to minimize downtime even more going forward.

Dashboard Charts on Handheld Devices

I had a user contact me today to let me know that the clickable charts on the dashboard page are causing problems when viewing stats on the iPhone.  To remedy this, I have disabled the charts on iPhone, iPod and BlackBerry devices.  This seems like the simplest solution to the problem.  If anyone misses the charts on their smaller handheld device, use the support form to let me know which device you're using and we can look into other solutions for this problem.

Organization Name Added to Daily and Page Reports

I've added a new column to the daily and page reports called "Organization".  Based on the visitor's IP address, this column will report the name of the organization (eg "Google") if the user originates from a corporate or educational network.  For residential networks, you'll find the name of the ISP in this column (eg "Comcast Cable").

This column has been added to the "Extended" report format and is now also available as part of the custom report layouts.

Network Issues (resolved)

It looks like things were resolved around 1:30 AM EST.  I'm told it was a bad network cable, which had actually been in place for years, that became unreliable and caused all of the issues.  That's certainly more convenient to fix than replacing expensive hardware, but it's maybe not the obvious first place to look.  In the 10+ years the WunderCounter has been online, I can't recall that a network cable was ever the root of a problem like this.

On a technical level, the ping times inside the data centre to the machine are now all under 5ms and there is no packet loss, so things should be as they normally were.  I apologize for any inconvenience this problem has caused.

Network Issues

There is currently an issue with the network which is causing the WunderCounter to load very slowly and occasionally not at all.  It's an intermittent problem and the folks in the data centre have been troubleshooting this for several hours now.  Sometimes the load times are lightning fast, so it's a bit of a head scratcher at this point.

The problem appears to be related to the load balancer which is in front of the rack, but this hasn't been established 100%.  The techs have ruled out the main switch as the cause of the problem and they're working to restore the network to the speed it should normally be at.

My apologies for the outages.  Since we can't say exactly what the issue is, it's hard to give a timeline for it being fixed.   My hope is, of course, that this is fixed very quickly.  I'll post an update here when I know that the problem has been resolved.

"Vile Christmas" Now Available for Purchase and Download

Occasionally my band releases some music. Sometimes (but not always) I post about it on this blog. I'm particularly happy about this latest effort, so I wanted to make a point of posting about it here as well. "Vile Christmas" is now available for purchase and download at CDBaby. Over the years we haven't just recorded songs for albums -- we've also made recordings for our family and friends. Vile Christmas is a collection of some of these recordings. These songs were not recorded for radio play, but to amuse family and friends and to provide an interesting gift for the holidays. We hope that these recordings will amuse you too. We had a lot of fun making them. We hope you have just as much fun listening to them.

http://cdbaby.com/vilerichard1

 Merry Christmas!

Moving to a new web host? You don't have to transfer your domain name.

Web hosting is a very organic business. Clients come and go all the time. Businesses come and go. Good ideas survive and less successful ones need to be abandoned. Sometimes a move to a new web host is urged on by your web designer. Maybe your designer is more comfortable with her regular web host or, as is quite often the case, your designer is getting a kickback for referring new business. You are now being told to move your site in order to put a few extra bucks in your web designer's pocket. Whatever the motivation, many designers will also tell you that you need to transfer your domain name when you make the move.

Whatever decision you make, you should be aware that moving your hosting business to another provider is more easily done when you do not transfer your domain name. Domain name transfers can be complicated, can involve a lot of frustration and are often just not worth it. You may say that I have a bias here, because I offer both web hosting and domain name registration. For the record, let me just say that I like to make it clear to new clients that they don't have to transfer their domain registration to wundersolutions.com when they move the web site here.

If you choose not to transfer the name, all that is involved is you logging in to your domain management tool and changing the nameservers. This is typically two text boxes which you have to fill in. Click the submit button and you're done. A transfer, on the other hand, involves a purchase of at least one additional year for your domain. It may require filling in an extensive form with the new domain name reseller, requiring an authentication code from your current registrar, waiting for a confirmation email and going to another page to confirm the transfer. Then, once the transfer is complete, you still have to log in to change the nameservers.

It's a complicated and convoluted process. You don't do it often enough to remember the steps. So, next time you move, you'll probably not remember how you did it the first time and the fun begins anew.

You should also keep in mind that many registrars make little to no money on domain name registrations. They're typically "loss leaders", or low priced items designed to attract your initial business so that you'll spend money on hosting, SSL certificates, email etc. My advice? If you're happy with your current registrar, don't bother transferring your domain name. If you're unhappy, by all means, find a new registrar. Just know that it's not a requirement, regardless of what you're told.

PayPal Single Payments Now Possible

Late in 2010, WorldPay gave me 60 days notice that they would be pulling out of the Canadian market and that I'd have to look elsewhere for credit card processing. The way they handled this could easily be covered in a series of blog posts. Let me just say that, after years of great service from WorldPay things have ended on a very unsatisfactory note for me. I won't be encouraging any more of my clients to go with WorldPay as a billing solution. There are better solutions out there and there are companies out there who will treat you with more respect. That's all I'll say about that for now.

The good news for you is that, as of now, single credit card payments are handled by PayPal. So, if you're already a PayPal user, you can now make WunderCounter payments either by creating a subscription (recurring payments) or you can make your payments manually when they come due. This gives you lots of flexibility. It gives you the hands-off autobill approach or the hands-on manual approach. It really comes down to what you prefer and it makes no difference to me which path you choose. :)

If you don't have a PayPal account, you won't be required to create one in order to make a single (manual) payment, so it won't be much different than making a payment to any other gateway. The difference is that PayPal will handle your credit card details (rather than the WunderCounter) and that's a good thing.

Hydro Smart Now Available in Apple App Store

Last week I released the "Hydro Smart" iPhone/iPod/iPad application. This app is targeted at people living in Ontario, Canada, who are on the "smart meter" system for hydro (electricity).

If you have a smart meter, you're subject to a quite complicated series of rates and times. If you run your appliances at the wrong time, you'll be billed significantly more for electricity usage. This application helps you to establish which rate you're being charged at any given time, so that you can make educated decisions about when to use more (or less) electricity.

This app is currently available for just 99 cents, an amount you can quickly and easily recoup simply by following the rate charts. It's good for you and it's good for the environment.

How to Rank #1 on Google in 48 Hours

I just wanted to pass on a link to the latest AppSumo deal. It's a series of tutorials on SEO and how to save money on Adwords. I haven't checked it out myself, but I wanted to pass the link on as SEO is one of the things I get the most questions about. (Full disclosure: this is an affiliate referral link)

Google SEO: Action Video 4: Hacking Content Creation

Let me know what you think of it.

Usage-Based vs Feature-Based Billing

Ever since I started the WunderCounter, I've struggled with finding a pricing structure which is easy to understand and which is also fair to everyone who uses the site. One thing which I've tried to avoid, is making the billing anything like getting a cell phone plan. Any time I've dealt with mobile providers, I've always been confused about the different plans, how any one is better and what I'd actually be billed for at the end of the day. For this reason, the WunderCounter doesn't offer a lot of different plans. For the most part, I think it has been okay, but I'm not 100% happy with it.

The main problem is that there are too many differences between the different account types. They all have different features, different amounts of data returned in reports and data on file for different lengths of time (2 days, 1 week, 6 months etc). It's difficult for new users to get an idea of which plan is best for them. On the server side, it's a hassle to have to enforce an elaborate permissions system to make sure that person X cannot access report Y. I don't think it needs to be that way.

So, this is just a heads-up that I'm planning to move the WunderCounter from its current feature-based plan to a usage-based plan. The migration from your current account to the new account will be seamless. You will not see any downgrade in features. In every case it will mean you get the either the same features or additional features.

This will also mean that you'll no longer be left wondering which reports you have access to, as it should be generally the same across the board for all accounts. There will still be a few differences between account types, but generally it will be based on usage. By usage, I mean how many hits/day your account will be able to track.

The idea is that if you're using the WunderCounter for a personal site which gets maybe 500 hits/day, you won't be forced to pay as much as someone who is getting 5,000 hits/day. You'll still have the option of a larger account which can track more data if you need it to, but you will be given the more affordable option as well, without trading off on available reports etc.

This means that if you use the WunderCounter more, you pay a bit more. If you use it less, you pay a bit less. Cool features get released to everyone at the same time and you can all give me your feedback at the same time.

This will also likely mean the end of free trial accounts. The free trials will be replaced by a more fully-featured free account which will have a very low usage limit. The idea is that you can now test out the free account for as long as you like before upgrading to a paid account. That removes the need for new users to have to evaluate the whole system over just 14 days and it also deals with the cheapskates who continually try to cancel free trials and sign up for a new trial period every 14 days. ;) (Cheapskates, I know who you are and, for the most part, I haven't tried to stop you, since you have been a source of amusement.)

There's a lot of history behind this decision and I've given it a lot of thought. I may lay it out in more detail if I get the time, but this is just a heads-up to let you know to expect some (very good) changes going forward. As always, let me know what you think.