Frames and Referrers

[rachel_1981_uk]

My website - http://www.geocities.com/rachel1707uk - uses frames and I've put the Statcounter code in the home.html page (it's the main frame on the index page), but for some reason it's been listing all the referrers as being just the main website URL. I'm using the special code for frames so I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. (Incidentally, it was working fine up until some time between 7th and 12th February and I can't remember if I did anything to change it during that period; I don't think I did which makes it a little strange.)

Please help!

Rachel.

[webado]

The only thing I can see that's wrong is the way you've put in the code for the <noscript> .... </noscript> portion. You have extra amp; for each actual & there. You may have used a WYSIWYG editor that did funny things.

This howevershould only affect the logging of hits from non-javascript enabled browsers, so it shouldn't be causing the trouble otherwise. I think.

The fact that Geocities drowns you in ads tacked on before, in the middle and after your own code may have a negative impact on the whole thing, I don't know.

[rachel_1981_uk]

Originally Posted by chrisooc

The only thing I can see that's wrong is the way you've put in the code for the <noscript> .... </noscript> portion. You have extra amp; for each actual & there. You may have used a WYSIWYG editor that did funny things.

I just copied and pasted the "frames" code from the "install code" page. What do I need to change?

[webado]

Well, I don't understand then how so many people get those multiple sets of amp; in there.

The php script which is included as an image for the <noscript> portion has parameters which are strung together as they are passed by the character & . For conformity with new standards that character now has to be expressed as & amp; (no blank in there but otherwise you don't see the amp; portion any more since bbcode swallows it up).

Either you've used a WYSIWYG editor to paste the code in which has resulted in those extra caharcters to be addedd by it, or you were unlucky to actually have buggy code generated by the Statcounter code generator. I don't believe I've run into any situation where it would geenrate that for me of its own accord, but maybe with all the different servers where people's accountss are hosted, one of them may have been slightly different at one time or another.

I will advise you to generate the code again and look at it carefully so you are familiar with what it has generated. Copy it to the clippboard and paste it in while you edit your page in Notepad, not anything else, unless you are aboslutely certain you are working in html code view mode and not layout mode. This last part seems to be what bogs down a lot of people.

Now if you have used some editor provided by Geocities, that may well be creating this and/or other bugs.

[rachel_1981_uk]

I took out the extra & amp; but it hasn't worked. Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

[webado]

Ok, but you only seem to have the Statcounter code on one page alone - the page that loads when we enter the site. There will be no referrers logged from within your site except that same page when you get back to it somehow.

As for having referrers from outside, that will depend on whether there's any other site out there with links to your site and people clicking those links to get to your site.

Since you've put it here on Statcounter and I have clicked on it, you should be seeing the Statcounter forum as a referrer for my visit I just made, at the entry point.

[rachel_1981_uk]

No, it's still doing the same thing; listing the page as http://www.geocities.com/rachel1707uk/home.html and the referrer as http://www.geocities.com/rachel1707uk.

There are a few other sites that have a link to mine, including my blog which also has a (separate) Statcounter on it so I know when people have been there and can compare ISPs to see if they've followed the link. When they do, however, it still lists my website itslef as the referrer (as opposed to the blog).

As for me only having put the code on the front page of my website, I wanted to get it working properly there first before expanding it to the rest of my site.

I'm stumped. I think you must have been right in your original reply and it must be something to do with Geocities. I might do another post to see if anyone else with a Geocities-hosted site has been having problems and how they've solved it. But thanks for your help!

[webado]

Just an idea which may or may not work.

In the frameset file, remove the full path from the url to the various framed pages, put a relative path only, like:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Rachel's Website</title>
</head>

<frameset rows="113,*" cols="*" frameborder="NO" border="0" framespacing="0">
  <frameset rows="*" cols="219,778">
    <frame src="cornerframe.html" name="cornerFrame" scrolling="no" noresize id="cornerFrame">
    <frame src="topframe.html" name="topFrame" scrolling="no" noresize id="topFrame">
  </frameset>
  <frameset rows="*" cols="224,*" framespacing="0" frameborder="NO" border="0">
    <frame src="sideframe.html" name="leftFrame" scrolling="no" noresize>
    <frame src="home.html" name="mainFrame" scrolling="no" noresize>
  </frameset>
</frameset>
<noframes><body>
</body></noframes>
</html>

Maybe that will sort it out.

[rachel_1981_uk]

I tried that but it hasn't made any difference.

BUT: the first of the two times you loaded the page this evening, it DID log the referrer correctly. It didn't the second or third times, or the time I did it (when I came to it from my blog), but it did the first time. The difference is that, on that occasion, it listed the page with "?200523" on the end of the usual URL (http://www.geocities.com/rachel1707uk/home.html?200523). I'm assuming that was when you loaded the page without the frames, in which case the problem MUST lie in the frameset somewhere. But where?

Is there any point in moving the Statcounter code to either the top frame or the side frame? I'm not too fussy about tracking movement within my website if it means I can see where people came from in the first place.

[webado]

I don't think it makes any difference in which of the frames it is as long as those pages always get loaded upon entry. It depends also which one of your frames actually varies as people anvigate around your site. Those pages you want to track I suppose.
I'll have to take a closer look a bit later.