I'm not sure how much storage and/or processor power it would take for this, but I know at least for my OWN curiosities sake:
Having available a graph of hit history for all available counters would be awesome, and the ability to add comments to this would be AMAZING!
There is the function in Portal to add 'hits' for daily data, but as someone who already finds it annoying to use the 'use the last digit of the price to differentiate same named items' trick a deterrent to even submitting my own shop front (yes, it only really stinks for people who stock map pieces), I'm not someone who is going to actually record the # of hits in Portal. Plus, Portal does not (and will not, at least in the current version scheme) support graphing of hits.
SO, just as another idea (I love throwing out ideas... implementing them is something totally different of course :) ), how about long term storage and/or graphing of the TOTAL hits for each counter? I think I suggested something similar before, but simplifying this to only the TOTAL hits (and not keeping a history of each hit SOURCE) may be reasonable?
One time in particular this would have been very interesting to me was when I reached #1 on the Booktastics list. Hits on my User Lookup, Pet Lookup and Petpage all shot WAY up, by 20-30x. Dropping to the #2 position dropped back down to the 2-3x range, and now (thanks to the stupid 'Alphabetical listing' that Neo uses, even though I was first to 111 books....) at #4-5, it's as if the Booktastics list doesn't exist. I'm sure there are similar things across the board for Books, Gourmet, Faerie Employment Agency, etc etc.
Similar curiosity may exist for shops - when NB ads go up, when they peak, when certain events take place (customization events, battle plots like Faeries Ruin, etc). Being able to visually see this in a long term point plot would be pretty awesome, especially with customized notes, or even blanket notes (i.e. 'Faeries Ruin' is marked as an event for everyone).
Obviously implementation of such a thing is one hurdle, but are there other technical concerns that make it not feasible (storage, processing power, etc). Is it something other users may want, or just another idea that pops into my OCD brain? Do I type too much? :)
The counter originally was coded to support this. However, there's about 4000 active counters so this means the database grows by 4000 entries each day, which i didnt think might be too healthy for it...
There's actually a separate code that clears dead entries.
Perhaps an idea would be to make it hold for like 30 days and allow export (like CSV) into neomallers portal...
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Dmitri, speaking of new functions, if you ever make another version of Portal (whether it be online or off), it would be amazing if you can list the total cost of all items somewhere. It'll be super helpful and I'm sure it's not too difficult. Thanks! :*
It should be on the main screen of the offline portal :P If that is what you mean... (under total cost)
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Yea, I actually got a credit line on the Portal release for that idea *lol*
See? Great minds think alike Leah ;)
Being able to import hits automatically into Portal, especialy if there was a history of like 30 days like you suggest would be AMAZING, I don't enter hits because it's just one more thing to do, and has to be done the following day, bla bla bla. Of course, combined with the graphing functions that'd be sweet ;) *lol*
If I interpreted your post correctly, you would like to see a graph of daily total counter hits (shop counter, and other counters), so that you could see how much you got on a day by day basis?
That would be cool. I am not sure how the counter interacts with the neomallers site, but I have several thoughts on this:
*with 4000 active counters, perhaps the amount of data could be cut down, if a lower limit was implemented. AKA your counter total is only recorded if you get, say, at least 30 hits. Maybe 50. This would cut down a lot of the active counters to record. In comparison to just shop counters alone, typically there are only about 250 or so counters that make at least 30 hits a day, more or less depending on how everyone is doing.
*Still, the above would be accumalating data, so idea #2 - This might be able to be implemented into the portal, or perhaps its own application. Again, I am not sure how the counters interact, but perhaps you can have an application that can connect to the neomallers site (using the persons neomallers login credentials to get their specific counter data). The current days count would not be complete, but the counter page always shows yesterdays total count. The application would only have to connect once to get yesterdays data. With that data, the app can create graphs and etc, and saving the data to an excel sheet or etc could be implemented as well. If the app was created with the capability to minimize to the system tray, it could be left on and automatically collect the once a day data.
Just throwing out some of the thoughts on my mind there. Still, either way, there is a downfall. One is data accumalation, the other is an increase in site bandwidth.
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The bandwidth itself is fine. I suppose i could create an API with a hash of some sort (so people wont go snooping into other people's stuff) It's sorta like what facebook does - allowing 3rd party things to access their data.
Either way, it needs to be embedded inside neomallers portal at the very least. People are lazy and would cringe at the thought of getting a separate program to handle it lol
This idea was going to already launch however with neomallers portal web edition but yeah, that thing has a bit of difficulties. But if i need code something, maybe i should get off my arse and code that darn thing to completion :P
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