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.
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.
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.
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.
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) ?
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.