I went to a website the other day after hearing a link on the radio and noted with interest that they had included my IP address at the bottom of every page I visited in BIG BOLD LETTERS!
Thank you..
Having had the same static IP address for the last 5 years I actually know my IP address, although it does leave me to wonder though, why they thought this was a good idea.
It does nothing at all to enhance the site and just serves as a distraction. It may also cause some alarm in none technical users who are unaware that all web servers need this information to serve the requested page.
Noting visitors IP addresses should only ever be done on checkout pages of shopping carts, usually along the lines of “To protect against fraud, your IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx has been recorded”.
The other completely unnecessary addition to a website is the visitor counter. I occasionally I get requests from clients to include some form of counter on their site, something that I am loath to do on a commercial web site. While I have one on this site, I feel it is generally out of place in most applications and in the end no one really cares how many visits you have had.
Personal websites are the only place that I would add a visitor counter. Commercial sites do not need them.
All decent commercial web hosting packages should give you access to statistical analysis that will translate the data from the servers logs to something that is easy to understand.
If that’s not enough, Google offer some fantastic web tools including analytics which can track where your viewers are coming from.
