The explosive popularity of Ferodynamics.com owes to that spark of interest detonating in two words: Myspace tracking. Scam artists jumped onboard right away which waned our interest somewhat. But we still want to know “who’s looking”. We’re still data-hungry.
I recently received an email from Phil. He’s coded an elegant little tracker that basically logs IP addresses.
PJ: Tell me about this tracker you coded, what’s up with it?
Phil: Well, my tracker—it’s actually more of a log, really—records and displays details of the last 20 hits on my MySpace page. It currently shows the hit number, the IP address of the visitor—which is about as close as you can get to ascertaining the identity of the viewer—and the time and date.
It works by including an “image” tag, with the value of the “src” property pointing to a made-up JPG on my web-server. In the .htaccess file for my server, I have created a redirect from this JPG to a PHP file which logs the visit—and all its relevant details— in a database. It then queries the database for the last twenty hits and returns them as an image file.
PJ: How did you get interested in programming a Myspace tracker?
Phil: I began thinking about making some sort of tracker after having watched my number of profile views slowly creep up over time. I thought it would be interesting to learn more about who these people were. I think it’s only natural to be interested in the people who are interested in us. To that end, I thought I’d develop some sort of way of seeing who these mystery visitors were.
It was also something I had never really seen done before. I had seen the ceaseless trail of spam which linked to websites which professed to show you who views your profile, (but instead only steals your password,) but had never seen such a system implemented. Admittedly though, 90% of the MySpace profiles I have viewed belong to my friends, and web-design isn’t really a hobby of theirs.
The final reason I decided to go ahead with it was because I have always seen MySpace as a sort of sand-box. I know it’s frowned upon for encouraging awful standards and for generally polluting the Internet with a meeting-ground for the bewildered and the confused, but I like it. I enjoy playing with it and trying out new things. It was through idle experimentation that I created my “multi display-pic” system, and so too was it that through the opportunity to play around, my log-viewer was borne.
PJ: And what have you learned so far?
Phil: I don’t get half as many unique visitors as I thought I did. Instead of developing some sort of log-viewer, I actually developed a way to monitor when my mum looks at my MySpace page.
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PJ
Everyone here needs to visit PROFILESNITCH.COM im in the same boat… it will help tremendously…
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:)
Nice one. By the way for anyone out there, what you really need access to are the logs of a web server that you control.
Then upload an image to that site.
Then post a link to the image or the image itself somewhere on your profile page.
Then go back to the web server (that you control) and look at the logs.
When someone accesses your profile (myspace/facebook) page they are pulling the image (aka hotlinking) from your web server, and your logs will show it.
From there you’d have to figure out geographical location and so on…
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Christine
I would like this code as well, if possible…Someone said something rude about my child and I would like to say something to them.
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cara
I’d like the code for the myspace tracker and the truthbox tracker. People are saying some pretty nasty things regarding my child.
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meg00
i would luv 2 have this code and how to do it 2 please email it 2 me
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Meghan Ashlea
I think I get the meanest truth box comments, EVER.
& Most of them appear to be from people I interact with on a daily basis.
Is there a tracker , or a code or SOMETHING, anything really that will make my truth box not so anonymous?
Please please please email me if you can help.
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Jessica
I would love to have the code for this tracker! I am really wanting to know who has been looking at my profile!
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Lovely
I would love to have the code as well, thanks!
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Tasha
pretty please send me the codeee =D
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tortor92
tell me the code to find out whp has visited my myspace profile!! plz plz plz!! thanks.
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semaj
can you please send me the code i would like to know who is visiting my profile.
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tyra
can i have the tracker code please