?wtx=Y showing up on Google Analytics - google-analytics

This isn't a typical question but it is web related and pertaining to a clients website. I've done some research on it and wanted to check and see if anyone on here is had issues like this.
#1: /Fanuc-servo-motor-repair/?wtx=Y
#3: /?wtx=Y
#26: /yaskawa/?wtx=Y
As you can see, these urls all end with ?wtx=Y. Does anyone know what could be causing this? It's kind of hard to explain to a client when I can't figure out where it's coming from myself. Would it be pertaining to an account like Google AdWords or AdCenter(Bing/Yahoo)?

Are they hosted on Webvanta? - wtx is their taxonomy param.
See: http://support.webvanta.com/support_article/615767
(Currently not considered on-topic for stack overflow, webmasters is probably the best place for this - Google Analytics questions are not really well-placed in either place - there's a certain level of programming skill required to get moderately complicated GA installations working correctly, but the interpretation of the reports isn't on-topic for Stack Overflow - cross-Stack Exchange tags would probably be the right answer).

Please note although whilst this answer is not addressing where the parameters are coming from it might be of use.
In the profile setup admin panel you can set Analytics to ignore certain parameters. This would stop this 'wtx' parameter appearing in your reporting.
See: Exclude URL Query Parameters

Related

Extend Google Forms (Custom Functions)

I ran into a bit of a problem here while creating a Google Form for work appraisals. I have the basic form for employees to fill out all set up but I need a second form for the heads of department to fill in employee scores.
Simply put:
User completes form
Completed form is forwarded to head of department for review
HoD finishes "grading" said form and submits to HR
Results are tabulated into Google Sheets for further use
Can this be solved with functions or add-ons?
As per stackoverflow rules: https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic
Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software
library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack
Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam.
Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve
it.
Having said that, I will be brief.
Yes. What you would need is just one form with a special workflow and the use of just one add-on.
I have prepared a functioning Testing Form for you. Please have look.
Make a note that the emailing ability has been disabled for obvious reasons.
Also. In the form a hint is provided for a password asked. Similar hint should be avoided in your working form.
PS: What to do when someone answers your question (accepting and/or upvoting) it.

How to deal with spam in a QA site where anon answers are allowed?

I have a Question Answer website. I had allowed anonymous users to post answers to question on the site.
Today I got 14 answers to a one question on my site, My site isn't all that famous and all. Its very new and build with Wordpress. I was shocked to see what these answers were... they were all spams.
Below is 3 out of 14 answers I had found on this question. As you can make out they are not at all related to the question which was "Difference between Encapsulation and Abstraction"
I have made the "add question" part private, meaning user needs to sign up to ask a question, for the answer part I thought I should allow anonymous answers.
I am confused about this now. Is there a way to deal with this ? I'm just hoping this question is fit for stackoverflow.com.
Please advice.
You'll want to add some form of captcha or anti-bot system to stop the bots posting random spam in the comments section.
I would recommend using a 3rd party plugin such as SI Captcha which is a widely used, well documented and easy to install & implement.
Alternatively, you could start blocking IPs, IP ranges or email addresses but you would have to keep doing this constantly whereas using a plugin like above would mean that the whole process is automated.
If you are using an outside commenting system such as Disqus, then you will need to let us know so we can find alternatives for you.

Google analytics tracking dynamic data

First off, sorry if this is the wrong forum to ask this type of question. If it is, please feel free to put me straight.
Is there a way to track a single bit of dynamic data using google analytics.
EG. I've got a used car website that dynamically pulls vehicle details. Although not part of the URL variables, one of those bits of information is the vehicle registration. Can I somehow include that in the analytics code so it's tracked on their stats.
Sorry if this is a quite broad question.
Thanks.
Yes, that is what event tracking is for: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/eventTrackerGuide

How to support your software and customers in a one man shop? [closed]

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Closed 8 years ago.
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Background
I'm a one man shop (a micro-ISV). A week after putting my product online I get a mail from one of my customers about a bug. It was an obvious fix and I fixed it in 5 minutes but I realize that the reason why the bug was reported so late is because the only contact I have with my users is through mail.
I feel I need something more but I have difficult time finding the right solution.
I was checking out some solutions, but I would like some feedback from the community
Question
What do you use for a micro-ISV (both online and built into software) when you want to give good quality service and support to your clients?
Have an issue-tracking system that your customers can use through a web page. (You do have a web page, right?) Alternately, if your software is interactive, have a menu entry "Submit Bug Report" which will email you what the user says, and perhaps other useful things (users very frequently omit things like software versions, OS versions, that sort of thing). Or both.
Also, your customers are likely to feel happier if they have a standard way to report problems.
If you want to go beyond the "email us" link, you might consider putting up a bulletin-board or even wiki-style forum on your site for your clients to use. Make your own list of Frequently Asked Questions the first post. I'd recommend using an off-the-shelf package, instead of rolling your own. A pre-existing solution should include the spam-filtering and moderation tools that you'll need.
Another idea would be to start a company blog, and invite users to leave feedback.
You fixed it in five minutes? Sounds like you're already giving good quality service / support. But if you really want a tool, I would check out if Unfuddle.com has a public bug report feature. I love that site.
This is a subject I've thought a lot about (since I'm contemplating doing just what you're doing), and there's considerable precedent for how you could proceed.
Set up a feedback page on your website
Set up a dedicated email account for your website
Set up automated opt-in bug reporting and crash reporting for your software
Set up a twitter account; and conduct twitter searches for your software name
Set up a Google Alert to track when a website or user references your product, and respond to them.
Set up a Uservoice account for your software/website (it's free for a 'small' company).
For a start, you can ensure your website is clear, and has useful sections like FAQs and How-Tos.
Make sure your customers can get in touch with you easily, and that you respond to them in a reasonable amount of time.
If you out and don't have a Blackberry enabled phone you could have your software send you an SMS of the fault.
A well designed website with a forum for news, updates, user discussions is probably a good start. It's worth paying someone to do this for you if you want to spend more time designing and coding good software. The more information you can put out there, the less time you'll spend dealing with customer issues.
In addition to giving your users more options on how to report a problem, your site should also be logging a fair amount of information. Such as, who, when, and what they did.
Further, ANY failure should be logged and automatically be reported back to you. Most clients simply won't say there is a problem and will just move on.
Just basic logging will also give you usability information. What pages do they use the most, which ones are used least, what is different about them. Are there features no one cares about?
Finally, engage your customers by asking them what they would like to see. Quite often their vision is different from yours.
I use ontime as a customer portal and help desk / bug tracking tool. It's free for a one person license. Which is great for me since I'm a one man shop as well. I'm the only full-time employee and have one to two part-time 1099 contractors here and there as work comes and goes.
There are also lots of open source out there. However, I've found the ontime to be dead simple, free for a 1 user license and cheap for 5 user license.
Split your time between development and customer support. If you focus too much on support, new functionality will suffer, and if you focus on development, customers will suffer.
So find a balance and plan portion of your time for development and another part to support.
Also keep in mind that solving the bug is just the first step.
You need to test (preferablyseveral configurations)
create a new installation
possible update manual and help files (and don't forget the translations if it's multi lingual).
Add a new version number (every deliverable must be identifyable).
Update website...
So it often takes several days to ship a single bugfix.
Besides, most customers are happy with a few updates per year. And ocasionally an urgent hotfix if the customer is in serious need of a bugfix.
I have a few systems. My main system is through a fogbugz account with buttons built in to my application that create emails for users so that they can then submit comments / bug reports etc. I also run a wiki as the documentation for my application, although I am the main contributor to the wiki and it does take a lot of effort to keep up to date. Again, there is a menu item in my application that takes users directly to the wiki. I have a built in crash reporter using an open source framework, which again submits emails to fogbugz. Finally I do online video and text based tutorials on my applications website, although I'd like to integrate them more into the application.
One (free) product that I know uses Yahoo Groups (and also a Google Group).
It acts as a mailing list: so if you report a bug, that's seen by other users as well as by the group's owner/moderator (i.e. you).
It also acts as a weblog/archive: so users can search it for known issues/answers before they submit a new message.
Have you tried Casengo? Its a free solution (for 1st agent) for handling email, chat and social media . It might be of interest to you. url: http://www.casengo.com
I am using Casengo for several weeks and is very easy to use.
Jeremy

What are the legalities of repackaging other's RSS feeds into a new presentation? [closed]

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I know that services like my.yahoo.com allow you to add content from RSS feeds to your personal page, but in general they are links which draw the user to the site which provided the feed. What are the legalities and implications of using RSS feeds as a data source for a site which repackages the data so as to be unrecognizable that it came from said source.
Does credit need to be given? It is a copyright violation? What is ethical?
What if credit is stated? Does this change your opinion? Does permission need to be granted?
Of course it's ethical! What on earth is RSS for if not for syndication, into as many varied and wonderful forms as developers can think up?
Permission, of course, must be asked for - in the form of a "GET /feed/ HTTP 1.0". And it must be granted in the form of a "200 OK" - or denied in the form of a "403 Forbidden".
Screen scraping is at least morally ambiguous, since perhaps the author only wants humans, and not programs, to view the content (assuming you believe it's within the rights of the author to make that distinction). But RSS? Seriously? No one forces anyone to make a syndicated, easily-mungable format of their content. It's not just useful for new presentations, it's meant for it.
In my opinion it depends on the data source company as to whether they allow it in their terms and conditions.
It probably also depends on where your servers are located (i.e. Which legal framework they fall under.)
Unless it is allowed explicitly or you have written consent I don't think it's ethical.
It also depends on how big your legal department is.
I would say publishing someone else's work without giving them credit will definitely lead to lawsuits or at least strongly worded cease and desist letters (followed by lawsuits).
Well, legalities aside it isn't ethical to not give credit to the source. The AP for example wants credit
The difference between what you are proposing and services like my.yahoo.com, Netvibes, Bloglines, Google Reader, etc, is that you are the one choosing the feeds, whereas with those other services the user is specifying the feed, and is therefore aware of it's original source.
Even though content is being published in feeds, and is therefore expected to be used with services like the ones I mentioned above, the publisher still retains the copyright over their content, and would usually expect it to be republished as-as. It is also customary to provide the link back to the original source of the content and republishing content without it would be frowned upon at the very least.
I've wondered the same thing for a while and am very hesitant to republish RSS feeds FeedForAll says there is no inherent right to reproduce content. You're asking whether it's ok to mangle the content, I'm pretty sure it's not alright to even reproduce the content. I think it would be like putting
<iframe src='www.stackoverflow.com'> </iframe>
on my website.
BTW. This is not a subjective question and this it is important. I'd re-ask this question or edit the title and get more relevant feedback.
Talk to your lawyer.
From AP's RSS site...
AP provides these RSS feeds to individuals for personal, noncommercial use under the following terms and conditions. All others, including AP members or Press Association subscribers must obtain express written permission prior to use of these RSS feeds. AP provides these RSS feeds at no charge to you for your personal, noncommercial use. You agree not to associate the RSS feeds with any content that might harm the reputation of The Associated Press. AP provides this content "as is" and AP shall not be held liable for your use of the information or the feeds. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT ALLOWED, AP DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES INCLUDING WARRANTIES FOR MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You agree to use the RSS feeds only to provide headlines, each with a functional link to the associated AP story that shall display the full content immediately (e.g., no jump pages or other intermediate or interstitial pages). You further agree not to frame or otherwise control the browser window (if any) in which the AP content opens, including limiting the size or position of such window. You agree to provide proper attribution to The Associated Press in reasonable proximity to your use of the RSS feed(s), and you agree that you will not modify the format or branding of the headlines, digests and other information provided in the RSS feeds. The RSS feeds may not be spliced into or otherwise redistributed by third-party RSS providers. No content, including any advertisements or other promotional content, shall be added to the RSS feeds. AP reserves the right to object to your presentation of the RSS feeds and the right to require you to cease using the RSS feeds at any time. AP further reserves the right to terminate its distribution of the RSS feeds or change the content or formatting of the RSS feeds at any time without notice to you. By accessing the RSS feeds or the XML instructions provided herein, you indicate that you understand and agree to these terms and conditions. Note: If you do not qualify to use the RSS feeds under this license or are an AP member or Press Association subscriber and wish to uses these feeds, please contact AP Digital.link text
From Reuters RSS site...
Reuters offers RSS as a free service to any individual user or non-profit organization, subject to the following terms and conditions:
Use will be for non-commercial purposes.
Use is limited to platforms in which a functional link is made available allowing immediate display of the full article or video on the Reuters.com platform, as specified in the feed.
Use is accompanied by proper attribution to Reuters as the source.
By accessing our RSS service you are indicating your understanding and agreement that you will not use Reuters RSS in contravention of the above conditions. Reuters reserves the right to discontinue this service at any time and further reserves the right to request the immediate cessation of any specific use of its RSS service.
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