

Show HN: Hitcount.me – Live Website Popularity - benwilber0
http://benwilber.github.io/nginx/syslog/redis/logging/static/blog/hit/counter/2015/08/31/hitcountme-live-website-popularity.html

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brobinson
Cool project! Some suggestions:

1) Add rel="nofollow" to your links on
[https://hitcount.me](https://hitcount.me) ... or say hello to SEO spammers!

2) [http://hitcount.me](http://hitcount.me) isn't forwarding to
[https://hitcount.me](https://hitcount.me) properly. I get the default nginx
page. Don't forget HSTS headers and other friends.

3) If you're going to have keepalive on, make sure your sysctl settings are
tuned to handle it! Having worked on pixel servers for an ad network, I
recommend sending a "Connection: close" but enabling SSL session
caching/resumption. (see #4) This doesn't really matter that much until you
become popular.

4) SSL could use some tweaks. Initial handshake is quite slow.
Caching/resumption should be on, too.
[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=hitcount.me](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=hitcount.me)

Also, looks like you're triggering a pattern in uBlock. Not sure about other
adblocker plugins. I guess "hitcount" has been used by other networks/stats
systems in the past:
[http://i.imgur.com/C47gHwD.png](http://i.imgur.com/C47gHwD.png)

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benwilber0
Hey thanks for the tips! Yeah I need to tune ssl and a few other things. I
fixed the https redirect and nofollow, thanks!

~~~
brobinson
Looks like you're getting spammed now by that OHFB site. :-(

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onion2k
_I’m sure you can figure out ways to break it, but it’s a waste of your time
(and you need to get a life)._

If it's not worth gaming then why waste time making it in to a game by
producing a leaderboard? If your answer to making a leaderboard is 'because
it's fun' or 'to learn something', then those reasons apply equally well to
working out a reason to game it so you're at the top.

~~~
benwilber0
Yeah that was meant mostly tongue-in-cheek. There are plenty of ways to break
it, I just didn't imagine that anyone would bother.

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gamerDude
Just hitcount doesn't seem to be a great measure of quality. What I think
would be more interesting would take into consideration time spent on page.
That could really help kill clickbait that has nothing to do with the actual
content.

For example, if I could find where people are spending more than 2-3 minutes
on a page, those are probably much more valuable reads than just hits.

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aaronfullerton
This is really cool and I appreciate the ease of implementation. I feel that
the best content on Reddit, HN, and the like is often not intentionally
seeking traffic but is rather unexpectedly shared. Unfortunately, that content
is often hidden amongst articles that are specifically posted on those sites
to increase traffic. Since you have to implicitly embed the Hitcount.me .gif
file on your website, Hitcount.me could act as an aggregator for finding the
best traffic-seeking content, while hopefully leaving Reddit and HN to power
the community-driven content and hidden gems.

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kylehotchkiss
does it pass the `ab -n 100000` test?

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solidpy
One more rule added to my filter. Thanks.

