deviceguru

I made a revised “v1.38b” with alternative cache refresh delays of 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 hours. Two hours caused occasional google API errors (too many transactions per day), so I’m now testing four hours. My site has about 1,500 posts. Most posts have 4- to 5-digit counts, and only a handful get into 6-digits. I don’t know what causes the google errors, i.e. whether the count values matter, or just the number of lines in the downloaded list. If four hours seems solid for a few days, I’ll probably change the options to be finer grained, such as 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 24 etc. I’ll report back after I’ve got it under control. Thanks again for your great plugin and excellent support!

The plugin is working well. It seems when I set it for hourly cache flush it eventually gets an error from google (too many transactions per day), but at six hour cache flushes, it seems to go all day ok. I wonder if it might be a good idea to have some in-between numbers. I assume the number of posts on a site is the key factor that governs how many cache flushes will work for a given site? Possibly also the count numbers, since that would increase the number of digits in the data. (I don’t know how the data packets are formatted.) I’d be keen to experiment with 4 hours instead of 6 hours cache flush. Is there a place where I can manually set the number in the plugin source for testing purposes?

Success!

Maxime: For some reason that PayPal link does not work properly for me here in the U.S. (Tried on my Android tablet.)

I just installed this on a site that has 1,459 posts, and it is the solution I had been looking for, for displaying views on each post.

Except, as described by others above, some posts — especially the most recent 50 or so — show zero views, even though they’ve been viewed many times. I am using the PHP function on the home page loop and the single posts. You can see the site at linuxgizmos dot com.

What happens when you click the “empty pageviews cache” option? Does it clear all the counters to 0, and then refill them all over again? I tried it and it did not seem to do anything, and did not change the zeros showing up on the most recent posts.

When I first installed and activated the plugin, I got an error from Google Analytics indicating that I had exceeded the allowed connections, or something like that. But it hasn’t happened since then.

Great plugin, thanks!

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UPDATE
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Following my use of the “empty pageviews cache” option, there are now page views showing up on all the posts I’ve looked at, so I think that solved the problem. Also, I read more of the previous support questions & answers, and now understand the problem with Google Analytics better. Perhaps the problem was due to it being the initial activation of your plugin on a site with about 1500 posts, and maybe it won’t occur again, since we only add several new posts per day.

Two more questions:

(1) I’d like to have the post views data be displayed on the same line as the time and author meta data show up below the title of the post, on the single post page, rather than on a new line. How would you suggest making that happen?

(2) I’d also like to have the same post views information show up on the main blog page, so each post shown on the homepage has a views count. Is there a shortcode or suggested tag for doing that?

thanks
Rick

Thank! I will experiment with that, and will let you know how it goes. –Rick

Thanks! Actually, that line did not help, but after some digging and experimenting, I found this alternative line does the trick in my hacked theme: .post-ratings {display: inline;}

It’s impressive how quickly you responded. I think I’ll go ahead and test your plugin on my main site and see how visitors react to it.

I will try 2.2.1 with “No styles” set, and will show you a screenshot of how it looks.

Hi Ajay,

Sorry to report this, but upgrading from v2.1.1 to v2.2.0 once again created the same problem, of the related posts showing up below the bottom of the right-hand column on my page. So I downgraded back to v2.1.1. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to experiment with changing.

-Rick

I just installed the latest update (v2.1.1), and it seems to work fine now, without any extra space showing up. So I think the vertical spacing issue is now resolved. Thanks for your excellent support!

hi Ajay. Good to know! I’ll redo the patch in the meantime, as I accidentally allowed the plugin to update. Regards… –Rick

Ajay, is this resolved in the latest updates, or do I need to keep patching each update?

Thanks, Ajay! I’ve now upgraded my sites to the current version of your plugin, and patched the plugin’s php file to change <div style=”clear:both”></div> to <div style=””></div>, so it’s working fine for now. Glad we were able to come up with a solution that will work for everyone. Love the plugin, thanks for writing and supporting it!!

hi Ajay,

Why not either…

(a) make the addition of the clear:both tag an option, with a check box (e.g.: “Check this box, if needed, to avoid overlapping with plugins that follow the related posts”)

or…

(b) remove the option and state that in case there is an overlapping with plugins below the related posts, the clear:both tag (show what it is) can be inserted via the “HTML to display after the list of posts” area.

Since you’ve already begun including the tag, it probably makes most sense to go with the checkbox and perhaps have it be checked by default, so it does not disrupt those who are depending on it due to having it be default in the 2.0+ releases so far.

thanks
Rick