sitemeter is causing problems
Posted on 8/1/2008 9:28:21 PM
Comment Count ( 2 )
Something is funny here, I pulled up my site with Internet Explorer and I got an error message saying "Internet Explorer cannot open the website http://www.dotnetr.com Operation Aborted" and then the site goes blank. Since I just released new code on my website to generate the xml necessary to populate the myspace pictures flash widget, I thought it was my fault. I tinkered around with the code to no avail for about a half hour.
...then a revelation happened - it even seems that my favorite productivity site lifehacker has been plagued with this problem too. The only common link between my site and Lifehacker is that we both use Sitemeter as a traffic monitoring service. Sitemeter is JavaScript code that tracks user visits and clickthrough events. This is a major issue because this software is used by many sites because it's free.
The solution to this problem is simple, either: 1) remove all instances of sitemeter from your website 2) use an internet browser other than Internet Explorer like firefox, safari, or opera.
This uncovers a good point. You probably shouldn't rely on other people's services as a business model. Right now as Lifehacker is down, they are probably losing a considerable amount of ad revenue just because they were too cheap to develop their own site statistics.
Update: it looks like Lifehacker and all gawker media sites realized that Sitemeter was bringing their site down. Hopefully Site Meter will fix their bugs soon, otherwise, I might have to figure out a new solution for traffic monitoring.