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Frequently Asked Questions
 
Is the service really free?
I signed up a day or more ago, but there is no data in my reports. What's wrong?
I pasted my code tags into my pages, but the code tags are showing up when I view my pages and my traffic is not being logged. What's wrong?
Where in my HTML do I need to paste the webstat code?
Why am I getting Java Script errors after pasting the webstat code to my HTML document?  My stats do not seem to be working.
How can I track more than one page?
Can I track multiple websites with one WebSTAT account?
How can I get my stats to reflect my time zone?
What is a "hit" and what counts as a hit?
What is a "Visitor" and what counts as a visitor?
What is a "Page View" and what counts as a page view?
How can I exclude my own visits to my website from counting in my stats?
How can I track my pages by NAME instead of by URL?
How can I track my DYNAMIC pages, since my asp,jsp,php,etc page produces many pages from one script?
I'm getting all the reports except for Search Engines, Keywords, and Referring URLs. How do I setup WebSTAT to work correctly (framed pages)?
How do I setup my framed site to track accurately?
This FAQ doesn't tell me what I need to know. How can I contact you?
 
 
Q. Is the service really free?
Absolutely! We do not require any payment for our basic service. We do require, however, that you display a link button (88x31 pixels) on your participating pages to help us grow. The more traffic we get, the more potential for signups. We do not make any money off of our free accounts. We offer the free accounts because we want and like to.

 Q. I signed up a day or more ago, but there is no data in my reports. What's wrong?
You may have forgotten the step of generating your code tags and pasting them into your webpages. This is a vitally important part of installing WebSTAT to work with your site. To do this, please login to your WebSTAT account and Click the "Generate My Code Tags" option under your 'Account' menu (With the Paid accounts it shows up in the upper right hand corner of your browser window as a silver folder icon with the word 'account' underneath it. For the Free accounts it's simply right in the same menu on the left side that has your reports under the 'Account' section). Your code tags will be generated in a text box on the resulting page, which can be easily selected and copied so that you can paste them into the HTML in your pages. They need to be pasted into every page on your site that you want tracked. Failing to do this will give an innacurate account of your overall website's traffic.

 Q. I pasted my code tags into my pages, but the code tags are showing up when I view my pages and my traffic is not being logged. What's wrong?
You are using what is called a WYSIWYG HTML editor (pronounced WUZZYWIG, which stands for "What You See Is What You Get"). These HTML editors allow you to create web pages visually, with drag-n-drop capabilities, etc, to make creating web pages simple so that you don't necessarily have to learn HTML to create them. They usually have several different 'modes' of editing: Visual, Preview, and HTML are a few of them. If you happen to paste your code tags into your page while you are creating it with the VISUAL mode, then the editor believes that what you are putting into the page should be displayed literally. The WebSTAT code tags are Javascript code, which are actually a small set of instructions used to tell your visitor's browsers to take an action. Because of their nature, they need to be placed into your HTML so that they are executed by your visitor's browsers, not visually seen. To do this, you will need to make sure that you are pasting your code tags into your editor while it is in HTML editing mode. You will know you are in this mode when you can view the actual HTML code which makes up your website's pages. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of your page and paste them in BEFORE the </body> tag. You will know that you have done it correctly when either the WebSTAT button ad shows up on your page (if you are a free account owner), or nothing shows up at all (if you are a Premium subscriber). If you are a Premium subscriber and you have configured your code tags to display a counter in your account preferences, the counter will show up.

 Q. Where in my HTML do I need to paste the webstat code?
The html code should be pasted anywhere after the <body> and before the </body> tags.  The stats will only be updated if the link button (or 1-pixel invisible .gif in the case of a Premium account subscriber) is displayed; thus, it is to your advantage to paste the webstat tags as close to the top of your HTML document as possible to ensure that the image is displayed. The code tags should be pasted into every page on your site that you want to track information on.

 Q. Why am I getting Java Script errors after pasting the webstat code to my HTML document?  My stats do not seem to be working.
The cause of Java Script errors or the stats not working is almost always related to the code you have pasted to your HTML document.  Make sure that when you insert the code it is not changed in any way. Use a text editor (like notepad) to edit your HTML document. Avoid WYSIWIG editors like Microsoft Frontpage that make changes to your HTML without you knowing it.

SAMPLE CODE ONLY:

<!-- BEGIN WebSTAT Activation Code -->
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://hits.webstat.com/cgi-bin/wsb.cgi?###"></script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://hits.webstat.com">
<img SRC="http://hits.webstat.com/scripts/wsb.php?pg=6214&ac=###" border="0"
alt="WebSTAT - Free Web Statistics"></a>
</noscript>
<!-- END WebSTAT Activation Code -->


Q. How can I track more than one page?
WebSTAT is designed to track multiple pages. All you need to do is paste the html code you received at the time of setup into each of the pages that you want to track.

 Q. Can I track more than one site with one WebSTAT account?
Although WebSTAT is designed to track one web site, there is nothing to prevent you from tracking multiple websites with one WebSTAT account. The problem is that your stats will then reflect the totals of all of your websites, making it difficult to accurately distinguish where your traffic is coming from. There are some reports like the "Visited Pages" report that can help you break down your traffic by domain name, but most of the reports will just display your cumulative totals. If you are just interested in a "big picture" overview of all your sites, then it is not a problem to use one WebSTAT account to track multiple websites. If you need detailed stats for each website, then it would be best to create a separate WebSTAT account for each one.

 Q. How can I get my stats to reflect my time zone?
WebSTAT is capable of delivering statistics reports based on your own local time instead of our server's time (US Mountain Standard Time). If you did not specify your correct time when you signed up for your account, you can log into your account and visit the "change profile" section to make the appropriate changes.

 Q. What is a "hit" and what counts as a hit?
First of all, WebSTAT does not do any measuring, gauging, or analyzing that has anything to do with the term "hit". A hit, in the LOG ANALYZER world, occurs whenever an object is loaded off of your site. This means that everytime an image, a page, a flash object, a sound clip, etc etc are loaded off your site, each object counts as one hit. A single page can have any given number of "hits" on it, since each page can have a different number of images or objects. This is, in our opinion, a completely useless way of gauging your site's traffic. Since you are interested in how many VISITORS actually visit your site, the term "hit" has nothing at all to do with how many visitors, or even page views, are generated by your site. Better terms for tracking your site's traffic are "Page Views" and "Visitors".

 Q. What is a "Visitor" and what counts as a visitor?
A Visitor is the count of actual people that come to your site. There are two types of visitors: UNIQUE (first time), and RETURNING visitors (have been to your site previously). It is useful to know how many of your visitors return to your site and how often. It is also useful to know how many of your visitors are new. Knowing this information might tell the Webmaster of a content oriented site how interesting the content is and how often it needs to be added to or altered.

 Q. What is a "Page View" and what counts as a page view?
A page view is the count of how many times pages were viewed from your site. Most visitors will come to your site and view more than one page, so this is useful information to know overall the average number of pages your visitors may be exploring.

 Q. How can I exclude my own visits to my website from counting in my stats?
If you are a Premium account owner, login to your account and click on the 'account' icon in the upper right hand corner of your browser window (silverish folder icon). From there click on "Edit My Account Preferences". Under this option you are given a form where you can exclude your computer's IP address (everybody's computer is assigned an identification number when they are on the Net).
If you own a Free account, just click on "Edit My Account Preferences" in your menu on the left hand side after you login to your account, and you'll get to the same place.

There are a couple of things you need to know about finding and excluding your own IP address:

1. Many people have "dynamic" IP addresses. Mostly this is true for people who connect through their Internet Service Providers (such as AOL, TELIA, etc.) When you connect through an ISP, you are usually assigned a different IP address each time you connect. In this case it is still possible to exclude your own visits, but you have to find your IP address's RANGE. To do this, either call your ISP to find out what range you are assigned, or visit our DETECTION PAGE several times after connecting and disconnecting to see how much of your actual IP address changes each time. Once you figure out your IP address's range, you can exclude it by only entering the first three parts (or two, depending on how wide the range is) of your IP address. For example, if you are getting assigned a number somewhere between 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.256 you can exclude the whole range by only entering the first three parts: 192.168.1.

2. Your computer may be using the same IP address as other computers at your place of work. This sometimes happens when you are connected to the internet through a "gateway". If this is the case, excluding that IP address will exclude the visits of everyone on that same IP.

If you don't know what your computer's IP address is, you can find it out by visiting our detection page HERE.

Q. How can I track my pages by NAME instead of by URL?
OR
Q. How can I track my DYNAMIC pages, since my asp,jsp,php,etc page produces many pages from one script?
There are currently two ways to do this. The first is the simplest, and requires that you only enable the automatic page naming feature. However, it has a drawback if your <TITLE></TITLE> tags in all of your pages aren't unique for every separate page you want tracked. If there are any pages that have the same TITLE, the pages will be counted as the same in your stats. If all of your site pages are setup with the <TITLE></TITLE> in your page's <HEAD></HEAD> section, all you need to do is enable Automatic Page Naming in your preferences (located in your ACCOUNT menu under the option "Edit My Preferences") and you're good to go. If this feature is enabled and your pages don't have the HTML TITLE tags setup, the name of the URL will be used by default.

The second method, if setup, will override the first method if the first method is enabled and this one is implemented. This method is more complex and requires you to edit your javascript code tags for each page you'd like to give a name. Let's take an example from a real world scenario. Pretend that you own a news site. You are calling a single script which, depending on the query string, outputs a different story (e.g. http://www.superdupernews.com/news.asp?storyID=53442). If you didn't give each story a name, the only thing that would ever show up in your "Visited Pages" report would be the URL of that script (e.g. http://www.superdupernews.com/newsstory.asp). To alter the code tags to substitute a PAGE NAME instead of the PAGE'S URL, you would alter your code tags accordingly (by adding the code marked in red to your OWN account's tags):

<!-- BEGIN WebSTAT Activation Code -->
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
WS_pn = "Really Great News Story";
</script>
 <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://hits.webstat.com/cgi-bin/wsv2.cgi?###"></script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://www.webstat.com">
<img SRC="http://hits.webstat.com/scripts/wsb.php?pg=6214&ac=###" border="0"
alt="WebSTAT - Free Web Statistics"></a>
</noscript>
<!-- END WebSTAT Activation Code -->


Here, we have a standard set of code tags (minus the account number, represented by the '###' mark), which have been altered (altered section in red) so that everytime a visitor views a page with these code tags embedded, the entry "Really Great News Story" will show up in your "Visited Pages" report. Copy the additional code into your pages, substitue the entry "Really Great News Story" for your own page's name, and you're done. That's all there is to it!

Q. I'm getting all the reports except for Search Engines, Keywords, and Referring URLs. How do I setup WebSTAT to work correctly (framed pages)?
or
Q. How do I setup my framed site to track accurately?
The most likely reason for this to happen is because you are using a framed site (frameset). Framed pages have long been a problem for capturing very important information from your visitors, such as Search Engine referrals, Search Engine Keywords, and Referring URLs. If you aren't getting any of this information, chances are you don't have WebSTAT setup properly on your framed site. To setup WebSTAT correctly to work with framed sites, follow these instructions:

1. Login to your WebSTAT account and click on your 'account' menu.
2. Click on the "Generate My Code Tags" icon.
3. Copy the code tags from the resulting page, from the box that is labeled to be used only for framed sites.
4. Paste these code tags ONLY in the first MAIN (content) page called by your frameset. Do NOT put them in your NAVIGATION (menu) frame or your TITLE frame. Only put it in the page that contains your content.

It is most important to put the code tags, especially made for the frameset's mainpage, in the first content page called to by the frameset. If they are not there, you will not receive the information you are looking for. It's okay to put these same tags in your other content pages, but keep in mind that they were made for the MAIN CONTENT PAGE CALLED BY YOUR FRAMESET ONLY. If you put it in your title frame, or your menu frame, it may or may not work correctly.

Q. This FAQ doesn't tell me what I need to know. How can I contact you?
WebSTAT is constantly being worked on. We are constantly fine-tuning the site and trying to work out the bugs. Your input will be of great help. Please feel free to email us with THIS FORM.