You have a blog. You have stats telling you how many people read it. You post links. But do you have something telling you how many people click on your links ?
Here is it : I'm releasing my latest plugin, Click Counter. Basically, it adds a click counter to links in your posts, as in these examples :
I love WordPress, WordPress and WordPress.
Click on one link and reload the page (hit counter displayed on mouseover link title, in plain text, or both)
Less basically, it comes with a real bunch of options you'll probably never need to tweak, but I wanted to do something as flexible and usable as I could.
Current version : 1.02
Note : you may find sometimes this plugin disabled here on my own server, when I'm tweaking a few things. The plugin is fully functionnal anyway, download it :-)
Note: The plugin is rather well commented, advanced users can probably directly download, edit and run. I'd suggest reading the "How it works" and "Tips & Tricks" sections anyway.
Set up the MySQL table
You need a new table in your WordPress database, named wp_linkclicks (you can modify the name, be sure then to edit the beginning of the plugin properly) Create this table with the following query :
- CREATE TABLE `wp_linkclicks` (
- `link_id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
- `link_url` TEXT NOT NULL ,
- `link_clicks` INT NOT NULL ,
- `link_date` DATETIME NOT NULL ,
- `link_title` TEXT NOT NULL ,
- UNIQUE (
- `link_id`
- )
- );
Newbie tips : first, install PHPMyAdmin on your website. This is a great interface for anything you can do with MySQL databases. Once it's done, look for the "SQL" link in the menu : click, and paste in the textbox the above code. It will set up the required table for you.
Install
ozh-click-counter.zip
Extract and upload to your blog, preserving directory structure if any.
Note: download counter here and stats on wordpress.org may differ and reflect the number of downloads before this plugin was hosted on the plugin directory
The archive contains the tracker file, go.php : put this file in your blog root. If for some reason you want to modify the tracker file name, be sure to properly edit the beginning of the plugin script as well.
Use the plugin
In its default configuration, the plugin needs nothing more. Get back to your blog and post as usual. It will silently add trackers to links in your posts and links in commenters' posts.
A small warning : adding a counter to a link "costs" one SQL query. If you are hosted on a slow server, or if you are teh ultimate linkblogger with 200 external links posted in your frontpage à la Metafilter, you might slightly overload your SQL server :) If this is your case, read by the end of this article the Tips & Tricks, I'll explain how to add a "silent tracker with no SQL query".
Another small warning : the plugin works with proper xhtml syntax, that is href="url" or class="myclass" (quotes), not href=url or class=myclass (no quotes)
How it works
Don't change anything to your posting habits, the plugin is the "install & forget" type.
When your WordPress will print a post with a link, the plugin replaces every link target and title. For example :
- <a href="http://www.link.com/page.php">link</a>
becomes
- <a href="yourblog/go.php?http://www.link.com/page.php"
- title="XX clicks">link</a>
The number of clicks in the title value will be added to an existing title if specified : title="this is a cool link (XX clicks)"
When someone clicks on this modified link, it will add or update the following values to the table you've created earlier :
- link_id: the link id, which is more or less useless
- link_url : the url, "http://www.this-is-a-link.com/page.php" in the above example
- link_clicks : how many people clicked on it
- link_date : the date of the first click on it (not the date you posted it)
- link_title : the title of the remote page, if exists, as defined by its title html tag
Unless stated otherwise, only external links will have a counter added, because it's pointless to track how many people click on your pages. There are stats plugins for this :)
So, if you want to add a counter to an internal file, put a absolute path in the link html : href="http://site/blog/file" instead of href="file"
Template Tags
I've written two "template tags" you can add to your pages
- wp_ozh_click_topclicks($limit, $trim , $pattern) : displays your most clicked links
- wp_ozh_click_comment_author_link() : a replacer for comment_author_link() in wp-comments.php, if you want to add a counter to your commenters' website when specified.
As you can see, the first one, wp_ozh_click_topclicks, has 3 optionnal arguments :
- $limit : how many links you want to display. Default value is 5, and can be modified in the plugin.
- $trim : maximum length for displayed links title. Setting this for example at 5 will convert "WordPress Home" to "Wordp…". Default value is 15, and can be modified in the plugin.
- $pattern : html code used to display the list. See right below.
The pattern parameter is an html string with template tags. The default value, as defined in the plugin, is :
- <li>
- <a href="%%link_url%%" title="%%link_title%%">%%link_title_trim%%</a>: %%link_clicks%%
- </li>
Tags are enclosed in between "%%" and can be :
- link_id: the link id number in the sql database, I don't see why you would use this one :)
- link_url : the link url, obviously.
- link_clicks : the number of clicks the link has received so far
- link_date : date of first click (more or less useless too, I admit)
- link_title : remote page title
- link_title_trim : shortened value of link_title, trimmed to the value of $trim as defined previously.
If the target page has no title, and is html content, the title will be replaced by the url itself. In this case, %%link_title%% will output the url, shortened by its trailing slash and leading http://www. if applicable.
It the page has no title because it's not an html document (http://site.com/somefile.zip for example), it will be replaced by the document name (somefile.zip)
Optionnal configuration tweaking
Now, I'll go through all the variables and their default values you can modify and edit at the beginning of the script. For the interested only, most users don't need so much tweaking and are probably bored of reading this page :)
Note : as usual, I've named the plugin file, functions and vars with a beginning "wp_ozh_click" to prevent any nuclear world war.
Core variables :
$wp_ozh_click['table'] = 'wp_linkclicks'
Name of the table where stats will be stored
$wp_ozh_click['file'] = get_settings('siteurl') . "/go.php"
Name and location of the tracker file
Basic features :
$wp_ozh_click['track_all_links'] = 1
Value can be 1 or 0
If set to 1, every link will have a tracker. Just post as usual.
If set to 0, you will have to specify when you want to add a tracker, with the following code :
- <a href="http://site.com/" count="1">link</a>
The value countwill be removed at processing time, so output will be valid html.
The value of count can be : 1, title, inline, or a mix.
- count = "1" : number of hits will be added to link according to the default behaviour as defined in the script (see below)
- count = "title" : number of hits added in link title : <a href="http://site.com/" title="69 hits">link</a>
- count = "inline" : number of hits added in plain text, after the link : <a href="http://site.com/" >link</a> (69 hits)
- count="title inline" : both : <a href="http://site.com/" title="69 hits">link</a> (69 hits)
$wp_ozh_click['in_title'] = 1
Value can be 1 or 0
Default behaviour for displaying counter (according to $wp_ozh_click['track_all_links'] or to count value in the link html). If set to one, display hit number in link title.
$wp_ozh_click['in_plain'] = 0
Value can be 1 or 0
Default behaviour for displaying counter (according to $wp_ozh_click['track_all_links'] or to count value in the link html). If set to one, display hit number in plain text after the link.
$wp_ozh_click['0click'] = 'No click'
Default text for zero click
$wp_ozh_click['1click'] = 'One hit'
Default text for one click
$wp_ozh_click['clicks'] = '%% hits'
Default text for several clicks, where %% will be replaced by a number
$wp_ozh_click['method'] = 2
Value can be 1, 2 or 3.
There are 3 ways to modify the link html to add the tracker. Each has advantages and drawbacks, but all validate any Doctype up to XHTML 1.1. If you want things to remain simple, just skip this setting and leave its default value
Depending on the chosen method, <a href="http://site.com"> will become :
- Method 1:
<a href="http://site.com" onclick="window.location='/go.php?http://site.com'; return false">
Cool : status bar shows real link without further trick.
Less cool : doesnt work with "open link in new window" - Method 2:
<a href="/yourblog/go.php?http://site.com">
Cool : works with "open in new window" and doesn't require Javascript enabled
Less cool : shows ugly link "/blog/go.php?http://site.com" in status bar - Method 3:
like method 2 but also modifies status bar to hide the ugly and sometimes annoying "yoursite.com/blog/go.php?" part with onmouseover="javascript:window.status='http://site.com'; return false"
Cool : status bar shows real link.
Less cool : adds a few bytes of html - I'd suggest you use preferably method 2, or at least method 3. Method 1 is really less accurate since it doesn't keep track of links opened in a new window
$wp_ozh_click['do_posts'] = 1
Value can be 1 or 0 :
Do you want to add a counter to links in your posts ?
$wp_ozh_click['do_comments'] = 1
Value can be 1 or 0 :
Do you want to add a counter to links in your commenters comments ?
Now onto the link title features :
$wp_ozh_click['get_title'] = 0
Value can be 1 or 0.
Get remote page title the first time a user clicks a link to store it along with hits in the table. This will slow down the first clicker, by 1 or 2 seconds maximum, time for your website to retrieve the distant page and parse it.
Note : mostly untested feature. It uses fopen(), check your host has enabled this (if not, the plugin will work anyway, and title will simply be empty)
$wp_ozh_click['get_title_forcerefresh'] = 50
Value is an integer.
Refresh remote page title every XX clicks. Set to 0 if you don't want to use this feature. If you chose to use it, the higher traffic – then clicks – you get, the higher you should set this. Examples : 50 for Joe's blog, 3000 for Slashdottish blog.
To be honest this is really a gadget – almost totally useless :)
$wp_ozh_click['extensions'] = array ( lots of extensions )
Most common non html file extensions. These are files that have no title html tag, so their link title will be the file name (somefile.zip for example)
Then, top link features :
$wp_ozh_click['top_limit'] = 5
Default number of top links to be displayed by wp_ozh_click_topclicks() (see above, Template Tags)
$wp_ozh_click['top_pattern'] = '<li><a href="%%link_url%%" title="%%link_title%%">%%link_title_trim%%</a>: %%link_clicks%%</li>'
Default pattern used to display top links (see above, Template Tags)
$wp_ozh_click['trim'] = 15
Default maximum length of link titles (0 not to trim)
Tips and Tricks
Here are listed a few tips or thoughts I've had during the development and test of the plugin.
» As a file download counter
You can use this plugin as a download counter to see how popular are your files :-P
To do so, you can either specify count="1″ in the download link html tag, or link them with an absolute file (http://site/blog/download/file.zip)
» Use with Matt's Asides
If you are using Matt's asides or something similar, you'll have to modify a bit your index.php
Replace
- echo wptexturize($post->post_content)
with
- echo wp_ozh_click_modifyhrefs(wptexturize($post->post_content))
» Use with blogrolls
Similarily, if you want to use the feature on a blogroll link list for example, modify the php code to add wp_ozh_click_modifyhrefs().
Remember one thing : each link counter display (in title on in plain text) will cost 1 SQL query. Know what your server can handle before doing such things :)
» Invisible tracker for weak SQL servers
You can use the plugin to track clicks at no SQL cost : set $wp_ozh_click['track_all_links'], $wp_ozh_click['in_title'] and $wp_ozh_click['in_plain'] to zero. It will still modify your link html tags to add the tracker file to them, but it won't display hit counters along with links.
Now, check your link clicks from phpmyadmin directly, or using the template tag wp_ozh_click_topclicks() (1 SQL query)
History
1.0 :
- Initial release
1.01 :
- improved : only one query if same url repeated
- fixed : no javascript in links for rss outputs (so the feed validates)
1.02 :
- fixed potential SQL injection
Wow
It took me almost longer to write this doc than to write the plugin itself :)
Shorter URL
Want to share or tweet this post? Please use this short URL: http://ozh.in/2a
ioannis » no assistance from me, sorry. There are probably better plugins to do what you want to do that will require no modification. Have a look on wp-plugins.net
Hi! My error_log file is growing a lot (and I mean a lot when it grow to 590 MB). Is full of messages like this:
[Sun Apr 30 10:46:00 2006] [error] [client 66.154.103.89] Premature end of script headers: /home/liberita/public_html/go.php
What should I do? Is some plugin problem?
Thanks you.
Vorlockstuff » go latest version of go.php ? If not, grab it. If yes, don't know.
Hi there. I have the latest version of both files. I have noticed that if I access to my error_log through cpanel it doesn't show all the content. Through FTP I have seen a lot of lines like this:
[02-May-2006 21:56:12] PHP Warning: feof(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/liberita/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp_ozh_clickcounter.php on line 399
[02-May-2006 21:56:12] PHP Warning: fgets(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/liberita/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp_ozh_clickcounter.php on line 400
Any idea? Thanks.
Zorclockbock » disable the so-called "experimental and untested" features (i.e. fetching title of a page etc….).
Ok, I'll try it, thanks.
Hi there Ozh…… ok yes, guess u r just right..
.. thanks anyway.
Very nice!!!!
Plugin would be very good if for making reports for admin of wp.
Congratilations!!! :o)
Hey Ozh! Thanks for this awesome plugin. I would love to start using it on my wordpress site, however i'm still semi-new to php so i'm sorta unsure of how to use this plugin. I created the table in my SQL like you instructed..but I don't know how to use the functions for this plugin. I want the click counter to show up on certain pages and I also want the click counter to show how many hits/clicks people clicked on the page(s) that i create.I'm not sure if i'm doing everything right. :( I hope you can help. Thanks again.
Julie » either you want a view counter and this plugin is not a page view counter or I don't understand what you're asking that is not explained here.
Hi Ozh! Thanks for the response. I basically want the counter to show how many people clicked on the pages/links. I have a view counter (sitemeter) on my site already. :) I don't know what the functions are to use the click counter, so that it will show how many people clicked on the links. I hope this makes sense. If not feel free to e-mail me. Maybe i can explain it more throughly through e-mail. :)
Julie » Read the doc here. You activate the plugin *and that's all*
I edited the plugin file at the following lines, adding the if around the two add_filter, but all I got is that I don't see the number of clicks at all, not as admin and not as a regular user.
// Add per-post filtering:
if ( current_user_can('manage_options') ) {
print "boo";
if ($wp_ozh_click['do_posts'])
add_filter('the_content', 'wp_ozh_click_modifyhrefs', 10);
if ($wp_ozh_click['do_comments'])
add_filter('comment_text', 'wp_ozh_click_modifyhrefs', 10);
}
Any idea?
Hey Ozh! Thanks for the fast response. :)I have the plugin activated but it doesn't show how many clicks people have clicked on the pages. Also I see in some people's page sources that they use they're url then go.then the I have tried putting this code in: and it still doesn't show how many people clicked on the pages. So maybe I am doing something wrong. :(
It seems like the clickcounter plug-in generates a "200 OK Document has moved" error in WP 2.02. Anyone else experienced this? Any ideas on how to solve this?
I'm trying to use your counter for tracking downloads from my site. But when I put the absolute path to the download in (ie: http://www.wilytrader.com/stock-files/ScalpRate.xls) after it runs through your plugin the following link gives me an error:
http://www.wilytrader.com/go.php?http://www.wilytrader.com/stock-files/ScalpRate.xls
Says "No Such Post Exists" but if I just type in the absolute path, it works. Any thoughts?
Jason » it seems there's no go.php file on your website. Read the instructions ffs.
WordPress delete count="inline" everytime i update the HTML code :(
i have solved my first problem, but it's possible showing the HITS in another position on my template ?
Anyway I can enable the plugin to links (that go outside of my site) on the sidebar?
I have a plugin that shows small snippets on the sidebar and I want to measure clicks there as well.
Thanks.
Hey Ozh, nice looking plugin, very simple integration. My problem is that the link count when I hove remains at 0. All of the links say "0 click". I look in the db and the show click counts, but the hove (or inline for that matter) continue to say 0 click. Any ideas?
Ozh why there is a difference from my log server and the display clicks ? My log server have more request respect your click counter :(
Hi Ozh,
thanks for this great plugin! It runs flawlessly, but I was wondering how I could change the style for the plain text. Is there any way I can make all the plain text clicks appear in, let's say, x-small font and white? I tried to fumble around with the css styles but didn't find the right solution yet.
Any help will be appreciated!
Anke
Hey, your little flag puts me in the Netherlands :( That's not nice for a German soccer fan *g*.
Greetings from GERMANY :D
Hey Ozh
I installed your plugin and everything works fine. My only problem is that after installation, my admin panel stop working properly. When I edit a template file, or change a plugin, the screen goes blank after I save the changes! What gives
Alex
Nice plugin you have created. Well, maybe your plugin can also count "clicks" on the trackback-link? I mean a trackback-counter? I didn't find an internal one for WordPress anywhere. I only find some which want's me to register to an other page but I prefer the "internal" once and not externals.
But anyway: Nice and good work!
Regards,
Roland
Great plugin, but I ran into an issue that had me stumped for a bit…you may want mention somewhere that url's have to be in the format:
Click Me
and not
Click Me
If you use the single quotes, your plugin will strip the entire link from the post.
Hi, great script. Thanks for having it available and for free!
I'd like to make a small customization to it, and I'm sorry if it's already been answered somewhere in the ~230 comments above..
Is there a way I can have it count just links coming from a subdomain on my site (rather than outgoing links or every link period)?
If it's a really simple one or two line change, I'd really appreciate if you could point me towards it. Thanks!
It look like the plugin is no compatible with WordPress 2.0.4.
After I did an update from 2.0.3 to 2.0.4 the plugin stopped working. I re-activated it for a couple of times but without luck.
Uh, am I missing something? It's not getting rid of the "count" for me.
I have the click counter on for all links, but I just added
count="0"to a link 'cause I don't want it getting a counter. However, it does not get removed. :(I fixed it. :)
Inside wp_ozh_click_modifyhrefs(), right before the return of $input, add this:
$input = preg_replace('/(.*?)<\/a>/', '$2', $input);May not be perfect, but it's enough for my needs. :)
I've a plugin to submit article with content and title outside the dashbord, but when i save a new article your count click doesn't work, i must enter in the dashboard in edit mode and resave the article….if i do this the script works good :(
i've used the wp_insert_post function in wp-includes/function-post.php….i don't know why i have this problem…your script work in real time without altering the original text, which is the problem ?
A good idea is to disallow bots from hitting go.php by putting something like this in the robots.txt file in the web server root:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/go.php
This plugin is good, exept it breaks the links when using it with http://www.sporadicnonsense.com 's srg clean archives, I cannot tell why..
Bonjour,
bravo pour ce plugin.
Je me pose juste une question, le script "go.php" peut il être executé uniquement depuis le site sur lequel il est hébergé ?
Une personne mal veillante ne pourrait elle dégradé les preformances de la BDD, tous simplement en faisant executer "go.php" avec à chaque fois une url différente à chaque appel. Une bonne vieille boucle qui tourne toute la nuit et la table "wp_linkclicks" se retrouve vite avec plusieurs 100 de milliers de lignes, non ?
Popol » si, effectivement, on pourrait avoir ce cas de figure… De même qu'un script malveillant peut tout simplement recharger 100.000 fois la page d'index de ton blog, avec toutes les queries mysql que cela implique :) C'est plus généralement un souci de protection antispambot qu'un souci du script lui-même. Si ce genre de question te préoccupe, jette un oeil à Bad Behavior
Hey, I'm having trouble with your plugin breaking links using apostrophes instead of quotes in the a href tags. As in this:
'http://linkedsite.com'
I have fixed it with the href=" thing :)
There is a regular expression in the very top of function wp_ozh_click_parse(). Replace it with this string and keep the slahses:
[^=]{1,}=("[^"]+"|\'[^\']+\')
The new line shall look like this:
preg_match_all ('/[^=]{1,}=("[^"]+"|\'[^\']+\')/', $html, $wp_ozh_click['link']);Have fun with single-quoted links! :D
@Ozh: I did a lot improvements on it. May I email you it?
Sorry to bother you with this. This was only the half of the fix. You also need to change…
$wp_ozh_click['link'][trim($tag)]=trim($value, '\"');into…
if (strpos("\"", $value) !== false) {$wp_ozh_click['link'][trim($tag)]=trim($value, '\"');
} else {
$wp_ozh_click['link'][trim($tag)]=trim($value, '\'');
}
Then it's working. Here's a direct link to my patch will template "go.php", URL encoding (Perl and domains from Poland ends both with .pl and this can "confuse" some security software which shall stop code injections) and many more:
http://blog.mxchange.org/links-patch.zip
See my blog entry for details. :-)
First thing first, thanks for the plugin. But i have a problem that i think it's related the plugin.
Before i install the plugin, post text can be selectable but after the plugin text can not be selectable in IE. It's ok with Firefox.
Are there any suggestion about it?
Thanks.
My question:
How to show the number of download besides certain text?
[…] Clickcounter zählt wieoft links angeklickt wurden, is für dich auch gut… check mal wie das geht […]
[…] Click Counter adds a click counter to links in your posts, so you can see how many times visistors click on your links in your blog. […]
[…] What I'd prefer is a click counter. That would count the number of times people click an article and make that the defacto vote. There are a few WordPress plugins (One from Ozh) but I can't get them to work properly and they're very hacky. […]
just curious, but does this kill the Googlejuice for links on your site?
[…] Click Counter (http://planetozh.com/blog//archives/2004/09/17/click-counter-plugin-for-wordpress/) […]
Well, I've found that this plugin is in compatible with SRG Clean Archives. For some reason, the links stop working.
[…] Blandt de mange statistik plugins til wordpress er Ozh's "Click counter plugin for WordPress" Det plugin gør netop dette, dvs. tæller kliks pÃ¥ udgÃ¥ende links fra bloggen. (UdgÃ¥ende links defineres som links med http://osv.. ) Click Counter tæller de udgÃ¥ende klik vha. en trackerfil som alle udgÃ¥ende links i blogposterne ledes omkring. NÃ¥r blogposterne vises i browseren er alle links tilføjet go.php? med den oprindelige url efterhængt. (altsÃ¥ f.eks. go.php?http://www.bo-k.dk ). Det sker rent automatisk. […]
Thanks for sharing this plugin with the rest of us.
Allow me a few comments:
I ran into a problem with links in some of my older posts. They were formatted with single quotes instead of double quotes and was therefore not recognised as such by the wp_ozh_click_parse function
I understand it is meant to be so. Nevertheless I changed the regular expression in that function slightly to the following:
preg_match_all ('/[^=]{1,}=["\']?[^"\']+["\']?/', $html, $wp_ozh_click['link']);
(hope formatting will show up correct?)
Pure trial and error, but at least it now seems to recognice all links.
(I see there is a another -better(?)- solution – in another comment.)
Also I ran into a couple of problems with title tags fetched:
One title in particular broke my pagelayout. The reason was that there were added some formatting tags inside the title tag!
Dont ask why me someone would like to do something like that, but it happened for me, so consequently I added a strip_tags to the relevant function.
Also there is af problem with titles fetched containing characters like é ä etc. (MY blog is using the UTF-8 characterset)
I don't have clue what do to about this last problem?
[…] Blandt de mange statistik plugins til wordpress er Ozh's "Click counter plugin for WordPress" Det plugin gør netop dette, dvs. tæller kliks pÃ¥ udgÃ¥ende links fra bloggen. (UdgÃ¥ende links defineres som links med http://osv.. ) Click Counter tæller de udgÃ¥ende klik vha. en trackerfil som alle udgÃ¥ende links i blogposterne ledes omkring. NÃ¥r blogposterne vises i browseren er alle links tilføjet go.php? med den oprindelige url efterhængt. (altsÃ¥ f.eks. go.php?http://www.bo-k.dk ). Det sker rent automatisk. […]