Last 20 Visitor Logger 2.0

Original Post: June 2006

Introduction
The logger has finally been remastered... along with a new fail-safe feature. It's hard to read a piece of code that you wrote over 2 years ago. As most of you may have experienced with my past versions of the logger, the servers were never stable. As a result, my fellow xangans have to change their code in order to adapt the new server settings. The improved script (fail-safe feature) prevents this from happening. This is not to say your logger will never cease to function, it just means that in the event of a server exchange, you won't have to do anything. As soon as the server changes are made, your logger will re-activate automatically.

Last 20 Visitor Logger 2.0 Features
- Logs 20 most recent visitors
- Each track is time-stamped
- Logger will not log yourself
- No sign up required
- IE and Mozilla Supported
- Displayed as a public module
- Server fail-safe script (new)

Instructions
- Copy and paste the code into your Website Stats (At the top)
- Change the "offset = -8" to your timezone offset

Code
<script id="ktrack" src="http://kaiyotee.googlepages.com/khost.h" type="text/javascript"></script>

Code (No Guest Logging)
<script id="ktrack" src="http://kaiyotee.googlepages.com/khost.h?noguest" type="text/javascript"></script>

Comments and Suggestions are welcome.
Problems or Bug Reports? Email: kaiyotee@gmail.com

Yu.

Updates...
[July 15, 08] : Bug Fixed -New user problem (read more...)
[July 15, 08] : New Feature - No guest logging (read more...)
[July 15, 08] : Bug Fixed - No owner logging, added update message (read more...)
[June 26, 06] : Offset removed, Time display upgraded (read more...)
[June 20, 06] : Server changed.
[June 05, 06] : Module repositioned to be below the profile (read more...)

Reworking the Logger Code

Xanga Ad

As I was looking at the Xanga web html for some new (but not so new) skinning on my page, I realized that their ad system was changed. Somehow I never noticed it was placed on the side menu as opposed to the original top banner. I guess it's a better choice... for everyone. Hardly ever see it simply because of my logger code placement is generated on top of it... I win.

But what's peculiar is the way the ad is generated. Now I'm a pretty curious person, so I like to challenge myself to remove "crap" in this case... the ad. There were several ad removers for the old Xanga ads and most aren't reliable as they are either not cross browser compatible or they just use some special mechanism to cover it up. I did manage to figure out a way to "remove" the old ad solving the cross browser issue while staying efficient. That means, the ad doesn't appear for one second then do a magic poof. Of course, I never released that code or even used it (sorry, but that was the "right" thing to do).

Anyway, I'm sure there are already talented programmers out there that's figured out how to adblock for this ad. Although it shouldn't take a genius to figure this one out. The old ad generates the ads via a script placed near the end of a web page. Good choice (for xanga) because most script kiddies wouldn't know how to intercept that code when it comes only after all the user code / style is completed. Through the flow of how our browser retrieves and displays web data, there is no possible way to access/modify any code that comes afterwards, only the ones before hand. Therefore ways it could be done were to create some sort of timed script that will be executed. Or if one could figure out the tags to remove from css (which seemed impossible, at least from what I understood). Again, aesthetic fixes could also be done since the ad position  never changes. So it follows a pathway:

xanga stuff  >> user header >> xanga stuff >> user website stats >> generate ad

But that was then, and this is now. So what's new? A stupid move by Xanga. I'm puzzled as to why they ever changed it. I mean, ads on the top would probably give them more income, granted that they did have some million users (if I'm not wrong). The current ad is "loaded" before all user code/styles. Again, out of users reach, but notice that it's only "loaded" before user custom data. It's actually generated after "some" user custom data... the header. What does that mean? This is what the pathway looks like now.

xanga stuff  >> prepare ad variables >> user header (cha ching) >> xanga stuff >> generate ad from variables >> xanga stuff >> user website stats

Guess what? This means users can mingle with the variables before it gets sent the ad generator. It's kinda like abortion, except on a more "friendly" theme. All you have to do is flip the magic switch to false...

<script>
window.initAds = false;
</script>

If they are smart, they'd put the js file loading right before where it generates. Let's see how popular (or unpopular since I've deserted it for some time) my xanga site is and hopefully one of them will hop by this blog to learn a lesson.

Last Post to this Xanga Site...

But there will be more of me.

Alright folks, since my name is now officially changed to Kaiyoti, I figure I'll move past it with Xanga as well... since Kaiyotee doesn't seem to be unique anymore. So I would like to redirect everyone to http://www.xanga.com/kaiyoti (haven’t prettified that page yet, but just bear with me for now. On the other hand, I might redirect that Xanga to my domain host and I’ll create a personalized (or use a 3^rd party blog engine) blog. Also, I've gotten myself into music writing projects (for short films, games, etc…) which explains why there’s a lack of update on this site. Therefore, I’ve decided to make the Kaiyoti xanga site another one of my musician profile / script development site. This does not mean I’ll stop writing scripts, it just means that I have to split work between the two.

Anyway, I seemed to have noticed that the logger script goes down because the server blocks the path. Either people don’t like my logger and they're reporting it… or maybe I violated something that I’m not aware of but I’m going to move the scripts to my http://www.kayoti.com hopefully by next week. This should solve some problems.

The logger is fixed temporarily, and I should stress temporarily because that seemed to be the trend. I hope to implement an automatic server switch in case one goes down, so I don’t have to debug it every time it goes down.

In anycase, I've left all the codes public on this site. Those will be moved eventually.

Some more places to find some sort of evidence that I'm still alive...
http://www.myspace.com/kaiyoti
http://www.soundclick.com/kaiyoti
http://www.kaiyoti.com

Cheers,
Yu.