Sat Nov 15, 2008 10:06 pm
The free version of Statcounter stores detailed statistics for only the last 500 page loads - so when it hits number 501 it deletes the first record and so on. Summary statistics (number of page loads and visitors each day) are stored permanently. But if you look at more detailed statistics like "came from" or "visit length", you only get information about the last 500 page loads - which is not a lot, especially given that typical PBase galleries have a lot of pages so one viewer going through your galleries can generate a lot of hits. For example I've just had a look at my own stats and they record less than the last two hours of activity due to the log limit - and 289 of the 500 page loads happen to be from a single visitor.
The level of detail provided by Statcounter is excellent but obviously this is a major limitation. Unfortunately it's rather expensive to upgrade to any kind of really useful log size - certainly more than I can justify to myself.
It may be worth looking at the other counters available - I chose Statcounter a few years ago and have kept it out of laziness, there may be better options now.