Some bugs are so stupid

I'd never considered this, assuming crond had some smarts for the situation. Do you think this also means that in the fall (when dst ends) your jobs scheduled for that hour would run twice?

I would assume so! I hadn't even thought of that either. DST ended on 2007-11-04, I just went and checked that date for this particular script and it looks like it only ran once. Hmm...If it's smart enough to not run twice when DST ends, you'd think the same would be true the other way around.

Speaking of bugs, a random idea I had earlier was perhaps allowing a second level of 'host it yourself' with the tracking code.

The problem with the current method is that even if we host the tracker JS ourself a critical connectivity/outage issue can cause failures, which manifested itself as an example a few weeks ago when something happened causing a morning/night full of stats to be lost (I forget what exactly).

The idea was that you also provide some kind of PHP script that people put onto their site, which serves the image that the JS file normally collects and writes the data to a flat file. Then, using a cron job or something, that data is independently sent to Clicky every 5 minutes or whatever. After a day or so the flat file data could be pruned.

It'd completely seal the deal for those sites that absolutely must ensure they get their stats tracked (even if nothing more than peace of mind), and has the added benefit of making the (perceived) loading time of pages a bit snappier. It may even allow download/outbound tracking to lose the annoying delay. Perhaps only offer it to paying customers due to the work involved.

Food for thought, anyway!

That's an interesting idea. Are there any other solutions you're aware of that offer something like that?

My host just banned my ip from logging into my own servers! But bugs are just as bad, now I gota call them and have them let me back on!

Heh-heh-heh ... having been in software quality for 25 years, I can tell you, your statement is so very true.

:)

And, I do NOT mean that in the way some take it. I have done this job for a very long time, and the smallest of mistakes or oversights just, happen. Really. It's just a matter of what is going on at the same time a snippet is typed, ya know?

And, don't get me wrong, I've written code too. I make mistakes all the time - it happens.

Your product is still AWESOME, so, who cares about a cron job?!

(not me - i never noticed) :)

Steve, I know, the most frustrating bugs are the ones that are so stupid you would never even think it could possibly be anything to do with whatever ends up being the problem, and then you want to die. The cron job in questions sums up the unique visitors, average time, bounce rate, and exit pages for each site, since it's not possible to sum that up throughout the day unlike most other numbers we're storing. It wasn't noticable until 2 days had passed because my code will only calculate that data on the fly for "today" and "yesterday", otherwise we display it as empty. By this time I had completely forgotten about DST and spent many hours figuring out why it failed until I finally realized what had happened and smacked my head against the table repeatedly.

and to increase the value of its annual produce. His capital employs, too, present and though this might, no doubt, be a considerable inconveniency to them, it would,

Hmm. That's an excellent point.

http://svisjwealth.communityarchitect.com