Part 1: Amateurs, "cookie" tracking and Master Snooper

How did you get your start in programming? How does one go from Old Order Amish to leading CGI expert?
Well, I like to say it's my brother's fault. (laughing) Two decades ago, he gave me a computer as a gift. He's not Amish anymore either, of course, or he would have shunned computers.

The computer was an Osborne. It used the CP/M operating system, which is pre DOS, had no hard drive but 2 floppys, and had a full 16k of RAM. It was top of the line!

The BASIC programming language came with the computer. When I opened the manuals and sensed the possibilities, I was hooked. Now, five computers later, I use six programming languages and program on four different operating systems.

You make your entire living at WillMaster.com. Yet you are quite generous in giving programming advice for free at your site -  why?
Programming for our own and other's Internet businesses has been my full-time work since spring 1999. I think I have the greatest job in the world and I like to share my experience.

The advice and how-to information contained in the weekly WillMaster Possibilities articles reflect my love of writing and of programming. Those articles, archived at the WillMaster Possibilities site and the private advice I give for free demonstrate my knowledge. Thus, I tend to be positioned in the receiver's mind as the professional I actually am.

The free MasterCGI Q&A Forum demonstrates our community spirit, where we respond publicly to CGI questions from people about specific scripts and from people struggling with the protocol. It also serves as our main support center for our free scripts.

The marketing secret of quality freebies, I believe, is to demonstrate professionalism, skill level, and personality, in addition to product and service quality. People like to do business with people they like and can trust.

Our free services and programs show we are real people who like people and who are professionals. It works. Our free services and support take less than a quarter of our time. Yet, sales of our off-the-shelf CGI programs are doing quite well and our custom-programming schedule is so full we have to turn away projects every week.

What should a beginner immerse themselves in to be a better website programmer?
First, be sure you enjoy programming. Programming requires long periods of intense concentration. If you don't enjoy it, you will soon burn out.

Next, practice.

Write programs that emulate programs or features of programs you find fascinating. It is not necessary to know all about a programming language before working with it; working with it and consulting reference manuals for alternative ways of doing things will teach much.

What three things scream "amateur website?"

• Text centered down the page.
• Overweight graphics.
• A "Best viewed with ..." notice, specifying a browser or screen resolution.
• Numerous banners.
• Conflicting colors or type styles.

Oops, sorry, I guess that's more than three. Mostly it comes to being considerate of site visitor. Putting them off is putting them out. Without visitors, a site is no more than a personal hobby.

Other things that say "amateur" are inappropriate elements or content. For example, rarely are guest books or hit counters appropriate for business sites. Also, before requiring a browser plug-in, investigate alternative methods of delivering the content.

What is the best way to determine the amount of time a visitor spends at your site?
There are many free and commercial site statistics programs available, many of which can be found by searching for "web site statistics" at the various search engines.

Some of these programs only record page views or hits. Others are a bit more sophisticated and can track visitors from page to page, including the amount of time spent on each page.

The tracking can be done by IP Address, which is not necessarily accurate. Several visitors from the same company's local intranet can have the same IP Address. And then there are ISPs who issue a new IP Address with each browser page load.

Tracking with cookies is fairly accurate. When the visitor first arrives at the site, a cookie with a unique ID is set. A log with time stamp is recorded as the visitor goes from page to page. Those browsers that don't accept cookies can't be tracked with this method, of course.

The above methods don't measure the time spent on the last page visited. When the visitor goes off-site, the destination site does not report the fact for the previous site's logs.

One way to measure the time spent on the last page visited is to have all off-site links launch a CGI program that logs the time of the click. This will not catch all visitor abandonments because bookmarked links and URLs typed directly into the browser are not measured. But those that are measured will be accurate.

A site that is entirely database generated has the opportunity for the most accurate tracking. Each link, on- and off-site, can have a unique code, which means cookie or IP Address tracking is unnecessary.

Great artists learn by copying the masters. Is that the idea behind your "Master Snooper," the script that allows you to see the programming behind web pages?
Actually, the reason isn't that noble. I wrote it because my Netscape did not always show all of the source code when I used "View Source" and the page contained sophisticated JavaScript.

When I realized the program could also be used to view the source code of framesets, external JavaScript files, and external CSS files, I decided to make it a free download. Because I learn much by seeing how others do things, I thought our visitors might benefit in that way, too.

Master Snooper is one of the most popular downloads from the Master Series of CGI Scripts, right behind Master Recommend.

Continued...