SpiffyStats FAQ

This is written in hopes of answering at least a few questions concerning SpiffyStats. It is at this point current as of SpiffyStats TR6 and should continue to be revised with every major release.

FAQ

Q1: How do I stop "automatic" mode if the application runs and closes before I can stop it?

Simply delete config.cfg

Q2: How do I add my own HTML code to the top (or bottom) of a page?

Unfortunetly this is not possible with TR6, I'm working on a solution, you can ofcourse simply edit the .html file though.

Q3: How do I add a background image to a page?

This is actually quite easily accomplished using the CSS files
Open the CSS file (x.css) and locate the line that says "body {"
before the "}" in this line add the following:
background:url("[remote-path-to-your-image]");
making sure there's a semicolon (";") separating this from the rest of the line and another semicolon separating this from the "}" at the end of the line.

Revishon by fw viper (fw_viper@hotmail.com)
Sadly the newer versons of IE don't read background image urls in body style sheets, this can be fixed however by adding a html tage and adding the background code there.
example:html { background-image: url(image url);}

Q4: The documentation and web-site is atrocious, is English a second language for you?

Kind of, English is my first spoken language, but my knowledge of PERL and basic far exceeds my knowledge of English. Give me a break, I'm a programer, at least everything on the site and the docs makes SOME sense.

Q5: You make frequent mention to the "core" of SpiffyStats, what exactly is this "core"?

The core is the part of SpiffyStats that actually gets the information from the log files, well, more correctly it's the methology behind how things are retrieved from the log-file and stored for analysis. To both end users of SpiffyStats (the creator and the reader of the stats pages) the core is the most uninteresting portion, but by far the most crucial to achieving what they want. The creator is concerned with the interface and all the little tricks it has, while the reader is concerned with the eventual HTML output. In truth both of these would be most useless without the core, the interface would have nothing to configure or run, and the HTML page(s) would have no information to display. In the long-run it is the core that receives most of my attention and it's usually the core that is responsible for the incriminating of a version number.

Q6: I see talk of "anonymous usage tracking", is SpiffyStats spyware? (or what is usage tracking)

Usage tracking is my own curiosity taken hold, it is an optional item that feeds this web-page. It's a small 0x0 image in at the bottom of a generated stats page that requests a perl script from out servers. The information collected is (and only is): your current host name (used to decide if this is a unique page hit), the name of the channel (this is coded into the image url at stats creation time), the url of the stats page (via the http-referer). Nothing collected is more then is logged by every-single server you visit on the WWW. The most personal information collected is your host-name, which isn't exactly personal.
If the concept of having anything about you recorded bothers you, then simply disable usage tracking.

Q8: Why are the stats pages generated in HTML 4.01 Transitional instead of the more compatible HTML 3.2 or the more conforming HTML 4.01 Strict or a more modern mark-up like XHTML?

The short answer: because at this point it's the most flexible and widely supported webpage mark-up that adeares to the standards of the w3c.
The long answer: because 4.01 transitonial allows some of the smallest file sizes (which is good with asmuch mark-up as the stats have), it allows most style concepts one could want to impliment, most users can write user code that conforms to when adding there own code to the stats. Most importantly HTML 4.01 Transitional is REALLY easy to code, which is why i like it.