May 7, 2010
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Cleaning up… Footprints!
As we continue to work on the new customized private home page, we’re taking the time to clean up some related features and pages that could really use a little TLC. First up: Footprints.
Over the last week or so, we’ve rolled a bunch of fixes and updates for Footprints:
- Better Bot Filtering – we’ve updated our filtering system so you should see far fewer footprints from random bots
- Cleaner “Page Visited” – most of the links in your “Page Visited” column should now have an easy-to-read format like, “Weblog: Cleaning up… Footprints!” (or whatever the actual title of your post was)
- Shorter “Referrer” URLS – we trimmed some extraneous data off the links in the “Referrer” column so you should be able to see more useful info about the links that are sending folks to your site
To see these updates in action, just visit your Footprints page.
Happy Friday Everyone!
Comments (69)
Sweet! Way to Xanga Team!
I’ve noticed the change, and I like it!
ooh.
looks good.
woohoo! I noticed the change and it’s useful, thanks!
I noticed this yesterday. When you “trim” the referal URL and it’s a google search, the result is we can’t see what the person was searching for anymore. Thanks
Thank you! Referrals work on Safari now as well.
I noticed it…it’s good! Thank you!
I’ve seen it and it’s pretty cool. I messaged you about someone from District of Columbia accessing my theme page I blogged about it too including screen shots. I still haven’t gotten a response though from anyone at Xanga. Please tell me that’s you guys? – http://tsh44.xanga.com/726650660/weird-footprints/
The bot filtering is good.
Cool.
@tsh44 - heh, yes sorry – that exact same “visitor” from D.C. freaked me out this morning when I was updating my own theme… Fear not! It’s a visit from “us”; it’s from one of the servers that takes an updated screenshot of your theme every time you edit it – so you can see your latest edits. That server got a little out of sync with the others, so it started showing up in some footprints. But it should be fixed now.
@radicalramblings - ah, that was always a problem – the keywords on search queries are always added to the end of those referrer links. In these updates, we trimmed stuff from the *front* of the links, so it’s tough to see how we made the problem worse (?). But yes, it does remain an issue – thanks for your ongoing support and help.
@marc - Thanks, I figured it was either you guys or xanga had been hacked and as time passed I leaned more toward it being you guys cause if a hacker was in he would have done more damage by now.
I like it. Thanks.
I don’t like it. Well, I like fewer bots. But, I don’t like the cleaned up data. I preferred the old descriptions. They told me more about exactly what was going on.
I love the new footprints! The page visited is so useful.
w00t… don’t forget to accommodate for those that may not have a foot, or both of them…
well done!
Saw this, too. Thanks guys. <3
It doesn’t really matter because the universe is finite and numbers aren’t even real therefore bots are not real, just like the mind of a computer.
useful
it is a nice improvement.
Yay and Thank you!
I think the new footprints are great.
nice
The ability to stalk visitors has just been streamlined.Thanks, Xanga!
I like the new footprints. It’s much nicer.
oh great, but what about the pages reached by clicking “next” or “previous”… the links still seem complicated to general users… hope you’ll also fix that:)
It looks great! Thank you – I love these surprises.
I noticed. And I like!
I like it! Thank you for all you do. (pats heart and points to you and you and you too)
love the new footprints format!
THANK YOU!!!!! I check my footprints often. This will be a very nice change.
I noticed it…it’s good! Thank you!
I like it :]
Awesome. That makes life so much simpler.
Have you guys considered sorting? Like by username (to see who’s most frequenting) etc?
Good! ~_~
great
Footprints are much better — but now I can’t get to the new blog page — yikes!
Nice
Great. Is there something wrong with the weblog editor/uploader? I haven’t been able to post in the past 24 hours. The page is blank.
Thank the Heavens. I have been waiting for this update a long time.
I can’t blog anymore after clicking on the new xanga editor. Do I just quit?
Thanks so much for your work!
@marc -When I go to my footprints, I can see links to pages where a user has viewed my posts, but when I click them, it doesn’t go to those posts. It’s my page, but it says “there are no posts.” Is this because my old posts are protected? I’d still like to see which specific protected posts this user has viewed. Is there a way for me to do that? Thanks for your help.
Thank you.
@faerieshadow - Hi! Sent you a message expaining the issue – cheers.
In the process of shortening the URLs, it seems that the extraneous data you removed in many cases is the actual search terms from sites like google and yahoo. Now I don’t know what people who come to my site from a search engine, searched for.
@CareyGLY - I think that’s always been an issue (more here)?… we’ll have to address it at some point, but in the meantime if you mouseover those links and look at the bottom “status” bar in your browser, you should be able to see the full link (including the keywords)
@marc - Thanks Marc…I do the mouseover thing, and it works (most of the time) for regular google searches, but not image searches. Plus if you click the “Referrer” for a Google Image search, it always goes here: http://www.google.com/imghpI can send you some screen shots if you’re interested. Let me know.
@CareyGLY - yah I get that google.com/imghp thing too – it’s annoying.Just for clarity, we did not change the underlying links at all (that imghp problem is a function of the original referrer link that hits our systems, which we record and maintain as the underlying link). We only trimmed the *display* of those links in the footprints table.
@marc - Got it…Thanks! You’re right, it is annoying. Though most of my my Google image searches are for one thing believe it or not. You’ll never guess what it is, but I get several a day for this. While I’ve got you on the line…when are you going to start supporting Chrome? When I edit an entry in Chrome, it shows up in all html. Thanks.
Xanga Team…Make people Quit trying to SELL shit on my site!
@CareyGLY - haha, oh man – I don’t want to know what drives people to search for that phrase. We’re actually working on an editor that supports chrome right now – it’s still in beta and definitely has some kinks, but you can try it out now if you want:http://edit.xanga.com/editeditorsetting.aspxJust choose “Rich Text – Beta”
@marc - Cool! Thanks….I’ll check it out and let you know!
Is that the reason we have to keep signing in??????
@oldfatgramma - heh, I don’t believe so – that’d be an unusual feature… where do you keep having to sign in?
@marc - I meant because you were working on the homepage. I suddenly have to sign in every time I log into my Xanga page. It is extremely annoying! I don’t have it as my home page but it is in the tool bar. I even have remember password checked. Normally I only have to sign in once a month not every time I go there.
@marc - Uhm… okay. If you say so. All I know is, I used to be able to click on the search query, and see what the search term was. Now, after you changed footprints, I can’t.
@oldfatgramma - hmm… sometimes that setting can get out of sync, which might lead to the issue you’re seeing. If you haven’t already, maybe try signing out, clearing your cookies, and then re-signing in on this page: http://www.xanga.com/signin.aspx ?
@marc - that didn’t work either
@oldfatgramma - what kind of browser are you using? Does it block cookies from certain sites? (If it’s blocking Xanga cookies, then all sorts of stuff might go haywire with Xanga signin.)
@marc - I have never had this problem before. I use Internt Explorer. I have it sometimes on the laptop too, but mostly on the desktop. I am definitely not tech savy and it is so annoying to have to keep logging in evry time. I don’t understand why it worked great until just a few days ago!
Didn’t see the difference.
What does the “Referrer” column mean?
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