mod_visitor

Author:	Benedikt Böhm
Version:	0.1
Web:	http://github.com/hollow/mod_visitor
Git:	git clone https://github.com/hollow/mod_visitor.git
Download:	http://github.com/hollow/mod_visitor/downloads

mod_visitor is an apache module that provides a simple way to track site visitors with cookies using an invisible gif image.

Description

mod_visitor creates three tracking cookies, to identify unique visitors and unique visits:

__vtc

The c cookie has only session lifetime to identify each unique visit.

__vtb

The b cookie has a short lifetime to still identify a session if the user has closed his browser, but reopens it before the session time expires.

__vta

The a cookie has a long lifetime to identify each unique user.

mod_visitor provides a visitor-cookie handler for apache to serve the smallest possible gif image along with the above mentioned cookies. This way visitor tracking can be added easily to existing applications.

Installation

To compile and install this module, use apxs provided by the apache webserver:

apxs -i -a -c mod_visitor.c

Configuration

In your apache configuration add one or more Location directives to serve the tracking image:

<Location "/__vt.gif">
    VisitorTracking On
    SetHandler visitor-cookie
    Allow from all

    # visitor cookies expire after about 2 years
    VisitorExpiry 63072000

    # session cookies expire after 30 minutes
    SessionExpiry 1800
</Location>

You can then use the %{visitor-cookie}n format string in mod_log_config to log the visitor cookie to a logfile.

Directives

VisitorTracking On|Off

Enable/Disable visitor tracking

VisitorDomain domain

Explicitly set cookie domain

VisitorExpiry seconds

Set expiry time of the visitor cookie (__vta) in seconds

SessionExpiry seconds

Set expiry time of the session cookie (__vtb) in seconds