Count view hits on a topic?

[John_Meidl]

We have a huge WebHelp, which contains perhaps 3,000 topics and at least two merged RoboHelp projects, which we update annually as needed. One of the stakeholders has asked whether there is a way to count how many times the various topics are being viewed by users.

Any ideas? Is there some little add-on reporting tool that we could easily apply? Or would we have to move all of the help topics to a totally new application? Is RoboHelp Server 8 sometimes used for monitoring user traffic/activity? How effective is it? Thanks for your insights and experiences.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Jan

You may want to check with your web admin folks on this. They should be able to provide such statistics.

Additionally, you could also investigate Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you would place a bit of code on each page that gets monitored by the analytics process. Of course that would only help you once it was in place.

Cheers... Rick

[RoboColum_n_]

To add to Rick's answer, RH Server will do what you want plus more. It adds a reporting utility that enables you to see the sorts of things your users are doing with the help. You generate WebHelp Pro output rather than WebHelp (although the generation and publish process are fairly similar). However all this comes with a large price tag. If all you want is a number of hits, the suggestions Rick suggests may be the best way forward.

[dm_gpc]

You can also try http://www.statcounter.com/. It works like Google Analytics, you place javascript code on each page. The free service offers a log-size of 500 pageloads, however upgraded Services offer more.

Donna

[hughbetcha]

I have hundreds and hundreds of pages. Would I need to manually add the javascript code to each page? Is there a way around this (besides RoboHelp Server) ?

[RoboWizard]

Hi Hugh

RoboHelp Server - Other than that, I believe there is no way around it. I may be mistaken on this, but I think each page would use a different identifier?

Hoping I'm wrong about that. And if I am wrong, you could accomplish it by defining the code in the Header or Footer area of a Topic Template and applying the template to all your topics to propagate the information.

Cheers... Rick

[Peter Grainge]

The code for the pages on my site is the same regardless of topic. I think what happens is the script picks up the page address.

Check the code in several pages and see if it is the same. If it is, I used a find and replace operation to add the script.