Nicolas Kuttler » marketing

Visitor Movies for WordPress

nicolas — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:02:04 +0000

Did you ever want to know what exactly your visitors are doing on your site? Watch them!

A client of mine wanted a plugin to log what users type into forms. I kind of didn’t see the point at first. But a few days later I was a little annoyed that there was apparently no free alternative to websites like clixpy, clicktale and similar services.

It occured to me that recording movies of visits isn’t really hard to do. And so i started a new plugin, loosely based on the unpublished form input tracking plugin.

I am very pleased with the results so far. Of course it’s no match for the professional services mentioned above. But it is good enough to gain a few insights into what can be improved on your website.

The recording script is pretty lightweight but has a rather hefty dependeny: jQuery. It also loads json2.js. I’m sure the logging could be rewritten without the jQuery dependency but that really wasn’t a priority for the first public release.

This plugin probably needs WordPress 2.8 and PHP 5. I didn’t bother to test older versions and won’t support them in the future.

Here is a sample movie of what a recorded session can look like. As you can see mouse movements, clicks, form input, select boxes, checkboxes and radio buttons are recorded.

Important: For the playback you should always use the same browser as the visitor. If you don’t, the mouse position will probably be very wrong. The plugin also doesn’t save a page’s state at the time of recording. This means if comments are added or the content changes, you will see the old movements on a new website.

Downloads at WordPress.org.

Displaying a smaller banner in an Openx zone

nicolas — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:35:10 +0000

Did you ever want to chain a zone with smaller banners after a zone with big banners in Openx? This sounds like useful feature. We don’t live in the 90s anymore where every page had a pixel-precise table layout. The world has learned how to build fluid layouts.
One the Advanced page of the admin pages of a zone, there is this If no banners from this zone can be delivered, try to… setting. Openx should really let me decide which zone I want to pick from the Display the selected zone instead list. I want to see all zones in the list.
Yes, there are workarounds, like using *x* sized zones, but why on earth should I create a new zone if I already have one that has exactly the ads I want to display?
Well, here’s how to change it. If you want to have the full choice, edit /www/admin/zone-advanced.php. In version 2.6.3, simply add the following line after line 230:

$allowothersizes = true;

Now, you get the full list in the dropdown.

Here’s a little more context:

--- zone-advanced-orig.php      2009-02-02 07:46:45.000000000 +0100
+++ zone-advanced.php   2009-01-21 15:22:04.000000000 +0100
@@ -228,6 +228,7 @@
     $doZones = OA_Dal::factoryDO('zones');
 
     $allowothersizes = $zone['delivery'] == phpAds_ZoneInterstitial || $zone['delivery'] == phpAds_ZonePopup;
+       $allowothersizes = true;
     if ($zone['width'] != -1 && !$allowothersizes) {
         $doZones->width = $zone['width'];
     }

Kind of funny that this setting exists but isn’t exposed anywhere in the UI… Yes, it’s a quick hack, so test it before running it on anything in production. Works for me though.

Preview Openx geotargeting for different countries

nicolas — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:20:55 +0000

Openx is a great open source ad server. If you have more than one website or simply want a flexible system for targeting your ads to the right audience, it’s well worth a look. One of many great features is the built-in Geotargeting plugin.

Of course, after adding local ads to your database, you want to have a look at what the page looks like for a visitor from a different country. It took me some time to figure out a way. But I found a good method for getting a preview for a different country. In openx version 2.6 you can edit the file /plugins/geotargeting/GeoIP/GeoIP.delivery.php at line 141. At the end of the OA_Geo_GeoIP_unpackCookie function, add something like

    if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == 'HERE.IS.YOUR.IP') { // insert your IP
        $aGeoInfo['country_code'] = 'ES'; // insert country code
    }
    return $aGeoInfo;

That’s all, no proxies or messing with your tags or sites required. I hope a similar feature will be added to the plugin sometime in the future. Oh, and I’m not quite sure what would happen if cookies are disabled, but who cares, this is just for testing.