The Internet is built upon HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). It is a relatively simple protocol that exchanges messages between a ‘client’ and a ‘server’. PHP provides access to these messages in the form of some global variables, e.g. $SERVER['USER_AGENT'] and $SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']. It is these variables that provide web analytics solutions some of the most important information they require.
For example think about the search phrases that your website’s visitors have used to find your website! Although you cannot really trust those variables (someone might lie saying that he found your website on Google by looking for “garbage guy”…), they provide the only way to get information about what browsers and operating systems your users are using and where they are coming from. All this knowledge is essential when it comes to optimizing your website and your advertising and linking activities.
The wopsta plug-in will naturally translate the different user agents (browsers) and referrers to provide meaningful statistics. Our twist is that instead of using an isolated client library that is only updated with every new release of the plug-in, we are going to implement a web service at wopsta.org. This web service allows clients to publish their recordings of unknown user agents, browsers, bots and spiders for the benefit of the wopsta community and themselves.
With this web service the plugin’s “rules engine” can be automatically updated by accessing the web service’s “update client library”-method. The new browser versions, operating systems, spiders and emerging search engines will be added automatically, enabling our plugin users to get the most out of the data.
As always we appreciate your comments and suggestions!
We are working on it…