Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Outage - Explosion at The Planet

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Dear Members,

Introduction
We would like to offer you our sincere apologies for the interruption in service many of you experienced last weekend. During the outage our forum remained online and we attempted to keep all of our members up-to-date via our Service Status announcements.

What happened?
On Saturday 31 May at approximately 11pm GMT there was an explosion in The Planet Data Center in Houston Texas. Electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls. Thankfully there were no human casualties.

On the instructions of the Fire Department, The Planet then turned off all power to the Data Center resulting in 9,000 servers being knocked offline.

How did the outage at The Planet affect StatCounter?
This affected StatCounter in a number of ways:

  • Some of our database servers went down
  • Our dns servers were temporarily offline
  • Some of our incoming mail servers went down
  • Our blog was unavailable
  • Some of our web servers went down
  • Some of our partitions were knocked offline

How did this mean for StatCounter members?
Different members were affected in different ways.

Members with projects on the following partitions were most seriously affected:
c1 (PN 0), c7 (PN 6) , c8 (PN 7), c14 (PN 13), c16 (PN 15), c17 (PN 16)
These members lost between 24 and 30 hours of stats over Sunday GMT and part of Monday morning.

Members with projects on the following partitions were unable to log into their accounts for a number of hours following the outage but stats continued to be recorded:
c4 (PN 3), c5 (PN 4), c6 (PN 5), c12 (PN 11)

New members and people who had just created new projects with StatCounter in the hours immediately prior to the outage temporarily “lost” their accounts/projects. This is because, since these projects were not on our last back-up, restoring the back-up did not “bring up” their projects. In this case, our advice is to generate a new project and re-install the StatCounter code on your site.

All other members lost about 3-5 hours of stats from approximately 11pm GMT on Saturday night. In addition members experienced difficulties reaching the StatCounter site and logging into their accounts.

As servers at The Planet come back online we continue to work to try to recover as many stats as possible to minimise the loss of information experienced.

Why doesn’t StatCounter have its own Data Center?
By outsourcing our server technology, we can keep costs down, minimize downtime and devote more resources to our members.

Why was StatCounter using The Planet?
StatCounter is powered by over 130 servers. These are located in a number of Data Centers in the United States and in Ireland and are spread among a number of hosting providers although our main hosting partner is The Planet.

We chose The Planet as our main hosting partner as they are the largest dedicated hosting service in the world and due to the apparent reliability of the service they provide.

We believed The Planet to be one of the most reliable and redundant data center providers in the world, particularly as they host servers in multiple centers in Houston and Dallas.

From The Planet website:
With multiple state-of-the art data centers located in Dallas and Houston, Texas, The Planet provides On Demand IT Infrastructure backed by complete redundancy in power, HVAC, fire suppression, network connectivity, and security. So if any of our data centers experiences a disruption for any reason, your eggs (or servers) are never in one basket.

The Planet have let us down, and in turn, we have let you down. For this we are truly sorry.

What did The Planet do wrong?
Accidents are a fact of life, however, we believe that, had The Planet operated in the professional manner we expected from an organisation of its standing, the disruption experienced could have been substantially lessened.

For example, The Planet have hosted our DNS for a number of years, however, it was only this weekend we discovered that, although our DNS servers are on different subnets within The Planet, the servers are actually all in the same location. We will be submitting a complaint to The Planet in this regard. We fully expected that The Planet would have implemented a geographical spread in our DNS servers – this was not something that we thought we would have to request or confirm - particularly since we have servers spread through all The Planet data centers. We have now secured the services of a new geographically spread, redundant DNS provider.

We also feel that the extent of the damage could have been acknowledged and communicated by The Planet in a more timely fashion. While we decided to implement our back-up plans early on, others waited many hours in the hope that The Planet would come back online, only to find that restoration of service was continually delayed.

In addition, we found that our efforts to communicate with The Planet were largely ignored or dismissed with a “template” response. This was particularly galling as we received a presentation glass globe (see below) and a letter from The Planet CEO on FRIDAY thanking us for being one of their largest customers… then Saturday… THIS!

Thank you For making a world of Difference - The Planet ???

Why couldn’t The Planet get the Data Center back more quickly?
We don’t know. Hundreds of angry customers have been asking this question.

What action did StatCounter take when this accident happened?
We immediately began work to restore full service as soon as possible.

  • Initially, and in the absence of any official information from The Planet, we worked to establish exactly what was causing the problems.
  • We started a thread in our Service Status forum to advise our members of the situation – this thread has been updated continuously.
  • We added a notice to out homepage to advise members that service was limited.
  • We procured the services of a properly redundant and geographically spread dns service and re-routed all our servers immediately.
  • We prioritised the restoration of all our affected partitions from our latest back-up taken in the hours before the outage in order to resume tracking stats.
  • We configured new servers.
  • We redirected web servers which were temporarily down due to the outage.
  • We responded to as many tickets as possible to try to explain the situation to our members.
  • We migrated our affected mail servers to a new data center.

How will StatCounter prevent this happening in the future?
The bitter irony of this recent episode is that we have been working on our new beta system since September last year. We decided to develop this new StatCounter system for a number of reasons, one of the major motivations being to improve the architecture of our system so as to insulate it against major outages such as the one just experienced. Considering that we have never before experienced an outage of this magnitude, we are bitterly disappointed that our new system was not up and running before this episode.

Once “normal” service is restored, work will continue on the beta project as planned. The sooner we launch the beta, the sooner we can minimise our vulnerability to this kind of outage.

I’m not happy – how do I complain?
We completely understand why you feel aggrieved. Should you wish to submit a complaint to us please do so by logging into your StatCounter account and clicking the “support” link in the top menu bar. Within this area you will be able to submit a ticket to us – we will endeavour to respond to you as soon as possible.

How do StatCounter feel about what happened?
We are so desperately sorry that any of our customers had to experience this outage. We also feel so humbled by the numerous messages of support that we have received. At a time when we feel so terribly for the interruption in service suffered by some of our members, we have been just bowled over to receive so many of messages of encouragement. While we always knew that we had a great bunch of members, your support and patience throughout this episode has been nothing short of incredible and served to help maintain team morale in a very difficult situation. We are so grateful.

Conclusion
We hope this blog post has gone some way towards summarising the main issues relating to the recent outage. Work continues to restore full service. If you have any comments or queries, please do post them below.

Outage Due to Explosion at The Planet Data Center

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Hi all,

We will be updating the blog with full information concerning the recent outage as soon as possible.

In the meantime, updates are available in our forum.

Thanks to all our members for your patience, concern and understanding at this difficult time.

Paypal - A Warning from StatCounter - RESOLVED

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

UPDATE: 15.25am GMT 30 May - RESOLVED

Paypal have acknowledged the double billing issue!
Please see here and here.

If YOU are a merchant whose customers have been affected by double billing, Paypal have confirmed that you can EITHER refund one of the two transactions by yourself OR contact their merchant support.

Sincere thanks to Karen and Danny in Paypal for their help, for working together to resolve our problems and for keeping us informed along the way.

While we have received great service from two individuals at Paypal within the last 12 hours, this does not excuse the lack of communication or assistance that we were forced to endure in the previous two weeks. We remain distinctly dissatisfied with the way Paypal have handled this situation.

As far as we can see, ALL the issues we previously reported are now RESOLVED.

UPDATE: 13.45am GMT 30 May

We have just emailed all the requested information to our contact in the Paypal Office of Executive Escalations who has promised to further investigate our case.

It appears that Paypal really ARE capable of providing good support - it’s just a shame that it took so long (and a blog post?) for it to happen.

UPDATE: 13.05am GMT 30 May

The excellent chap now looking after our case in “PayPal Merchant Technical Support” has just updated us again:

I’m working with our management team to setup a procedure for all the PayPal merchant affected by this issue.

We will also post shortly on our forum an acknowledgement of this additional issue with subscriptions, where you can redirect your customers in case they need a clarification.

I’ll keep you posted.

While it has taken weeks for this to happen Paypal ARE now communicating and we hope that the remaining unresolved issues will shortly be resolved for all of us.

UPDATE: 12.55am GMT 30 May

We are delighted to advise that we have spoken to a very helpful person in the Paypal Office of Executive Escalations. She apologised on behalf of Paypal, is fully investigating our case at present and has noted all our points in relation to the lack of communication and assistance. We will keep you updated.

UPDATE: 12.05am GMT 30 May

We have received a further email from “PayPal Merchant Technical Support”.

After reviewing those transactions I fully agree with the description of the issue you gave me.

Folks - we hope this means that the double billing issues will be resolved shortly.

UPDATE: 11.50am GMT 30 May

We have now received a voicemail from the Paypal Office of Executive Escalations. They would like to speak to us about the ongoing subscription problems and double billing issues. They are due to call us back later today.

UPDATE: 11.20am GMT 30 May

We have received a further email from “PayPal Merchant Technical Support”. They have informed us that the missing subscription issue has been resolved as we established in our update at the end of this post at 11:20pm GMT yesterday.

They have also confirmed that they are investigating the double billing issue. We are very relieved to finally KNOW that Paypal are actively investigating and addressing our concerns.

We will update again as we hear more.

UPDATE: 7.40am GMT 30 May

We have received an email from “PayPal Merchant Technical Support”

Thank you for contacting PayPal Merchant Technical Support.

I will research this matter further and update you with more information as it becomes available. If you have any additional information or updates to your issue, please use the instructions in this email to update your ticket.

Thank you for your patience.

Although the double billing issue remains, in light of many of the other issues being resolved we are hopeful that this problem will be fixed shortly.

Many thanks to all of you for your support. Particular thanks to our customers who have been directly affected by these problems for their patience and understanding.

We would like to emphasise that if the problems had been “just” affecting StatCounter we could have lived with that (e.g. if payment to our bank account was delayed) but since these problems have impacted on our members also, Paypal’s lack of action is simply unacceptable.

We are not happy that these issues had to brought into the public domain like this, however, Paypal’s lack of communication and assistance left us with no other option.

It may be a coincidence, but on the day that we posted this blog, nearly all of the highlighted issues were reported as “resolved”, 14 days after all of the problems arose.

We would still welcome an official response from Paypal in relation to these these problems.

Hi folks,

The Issue
We are having ongoing, critical problems with Paypal.

In view of the complete lack of assistance from Paypal in this regard, we have decided that we have no option but to inform you, our members, about the facts of the situation. This will allow you to make an informed decision about whether to use (or whether to continue to use) Paypal.

Please note that these problems may arise not only in relation to payments made to StatCounter but in relation to ANY Paypal payments that you make. We hope that this post will equip you with the information necessary to make sure that YOU do not become another victim of this ongoing Paypal saga.

The Problems
On 15 May Paypal performed a site update - this is confirmed by Paypal here.

After this date numerous problems were reported across the globe:

  • The Paypal Handling Cart feature completely broke down - see update below
  • Cross border payments could not be made as the drop down country list did not work - see update below
  • Customers have been flooded with hundreds of duplicate subscription emails from Paypal - see update below
  • Payments from Paypal are no longer associated with the relevant subscriptions - see update below
  • Some customers have been and are being DOUBLE BILLED by Paypal
  • Merchants have not been receiving instant payment notifications or failure notifications
  • Merchants/customers are unable to cancel subscriptions - see update below

The main problem that we have with Paypal is NOT the list of issues above - we all know that errors happen - we are absolutely furious at the complete lack of acknowledgement or assistance from Paypal in relation to these matters.

At StatCounter we have tried phoning, emailing, posting on the Paypal forums… Many of our contacts are ignored, but even when we do get an answer all we are told is that “Upon review of your account, unfortunately we do not have a time frame for a resolution to your issue we are currently actively investigating your issue with subscriptions.” You can see our posts in the Paypal forums here and here.

It appears that all of these problems are the result of the update made by Paypal on 15 May. Typically, any software upgrades can be “rolled back” if they are found to be flawed. Paypal’s inability (unwillingness?) to do this does not bode well.

What does this mean for me as a StatCounter Paypal Subscriber?
Unfortunately, we will be unable to issue invoices to many of our customers who pay us via Paypal until such time as the above issues are resolved. This is because the “payment file” provided by Paypal and from which invoices are generated is incomplete.

There is also a danger that you may be “double billed”. Please make sure to check your Paypal account to see if this happens. Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal.

Other StatCounter Upgrade Options
Please note that you can also make subscription payments to StatCounter using your credit card directly, by cheque or by electonic transfer to our bank.

Conclusion
Folks - we sincerely regret any problems you are experiencing and assure you that we are doing our best to get all of these issues resolved for you. We strive to offer a high level of customer service and pride ourselves on being responsive to the needs and suggestions of our members. To have our hands “tied” in this way as a result of Paypal’s inaction is frustrating to say the least.

These problems with Paypal have already cost us thousands of dollars. We continue to expend large amounts of time and resources on these issues - resources which we would much prefer to concentrate on improving the service we provide to you. We would be very grateful for your patience at this time as we wait for Paypal to resolve these issues.

We would also ask you to be patient with any of our fellow internet merchants experiencing difficulties with Paypal at this time.

Please post any comments or questions below.

Notes:

  1. This post is not intended to alarm, instead it is intended to inform.
  2. We at StatCounter do not take any pleasure in having to report these issues to you, rather we feel at this point that we have no option but to do so.
  3. While we hope that this post will generate media attention which may force Paypal to finally act and respond to the various problems outlined above, it is not the intention of the post to generate publicity for StatCounter.
  4. As we like to try to accomodate the needs of our members Paypal is still currently available as a payment option on StatCounter for new upgraded account subscribers. This position is currently under review and opinions from our members in this regard are being sought here.
  5. Paypal, of course, have a right of reply to this post and should they wish to contact us, we would be happy to post their response here.

Other Links:
www.channelregister.co.uk

tech.blorge.com
www.finextra.com
Paypal Forums 1
Paypal Forums 2

Paypal Forums 3

Update 2pm GMT 29 May: This post by Paypal indicates that the following issues have been resolved:
1) For subscription signups, when trying to enter billing information users
are not be able to change the country on the billing page.

2) For merchants using “handling_cart” parameter with PayPal Shopping
Cart buttons handling amount is not charged.

To the best of our knowledge the other issues remain and do not yet appear to have been acknowledged by Paypal.

Update 9pm GMT 29 May: A post by a Paypal staff member here indicates that these issues (some of which we weren’t even aware of) have been resolved:
1. Cannot change ‘country’ for subscriptions.
2. Free trials not being charged once trial period is over.
3. Subscriptions with free trials not being shown in history log.
4. Can’t cancel an active subscription.
5. Multiple emails being recieved (sic) for subscription payments.

No mention appears to have been made of these issues:
# Payments from Paypal are no longer associated with the relevant subscriptions
# Some customers have been and are being DOUBLE BILLED by Paypal
# Merchants have not been receiving instant payment notifications or failure notifications
The double billing remains the major issue of concern to us.

Update 11:20pm GMT 29 May:
Although we have still not received any official communications from Paypal, we can confirm from our own experience that payments from Paypal ARE now again being associated with the relevant subscriptions. For StatCounter members with Paypal upgrades this will mean that we can now issue you with your outstanding invoices.

We have confirmed in our account that the double billing issue persists:
# Some customers have been and are being DOUBLE BILLED by Paypal

As far as we are aware, the following issue also remains:
# Merchants have not been receiving instant payment notifications or failure notifications

Paypal - time to go?

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Hi all,

We are writing this post because, despite continued efforts on our part, Paypal have still not resolved an issue that cropped up for us on 15 May and that affects some of you, our members.

If you are an upgraded StatCounter member and you pay us via Paypal, please be aware that you may not receive your StatCounter invoice for some time. This is because Paypal have been unable to provide us with a complete payments file since 15 May.

See here and here for more information.

paypal

paypal claims to be global leader

Global Leader in Online Payments??


While we know that all services can experience “bumps” from time-to-time, there is no excuse for repeatedly ignoring your customers over a prolonged period of time.

The apparent absence of concern or interest from Paypal with regard to this issue has severely damaged the reputation of this company in our eyes. Our support tickets to Paypal are answered with a generic “I’m sorry but we don’t have an update for you at this time” - this is simply not acceptable!

By the way Paypal - if you’re listening and would like to respond, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please post in the comments or contact us here.

Note that to compensate for the poor service being provided by Paypal, we will be manually (!!) creating as many invoices as possible over the coming days, however, we estimate that we will be unable to create invoices for approximately 10% of our Paypal subscribers until such time as Paypal gets its act together.

We are considering removing Paypal as a payment option entirely for new subscribers to StatCounter due to:

  • The time and costs that we will incur as a result of the problems with Paypal;
  • But in particular as a result of the inconvenience it causes to you our members

Since wasting time and resources on Paypal issues, means we have less time to devote to you and to improving our service… is it time to show Paypal the door?

Update: To avoid confusion we would like to clarify that, we have, of course, been in regular phone contact with Paypal in addition to submitting email tickets. Assistance has not been forthcoming via either contact method.


Update 2: In an effort to make contact with Paypal via another avenue we posted on the Paypal Developer Forum yesterday. There has still been no response from Paypal although it appears that other tickets posted
after our one have been answered.

You say tomato…

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

…I say “tomato”…

You say “check”…

…I say “cheque”…

…but whatever way you spell it, we are delighted to let you know that you can now upgrade your StatCounter account via a check/cheque payment!

Check/Cheque Payments
We have allowed check/cheque payments for a small number of customers for quite a while now, but this payment option is now available to our full membership base.

Please note that due to the extra processing costs involved in accepting cheque payments, only annual upgrades can be paid using this method.

Credit Card Payments - System Improved!
We know that many of you had trouble with the credit card processor we used previously and we sincerely apologise for this.

We are very grateful for your custom, so it made us very mad when you had trouble upgrading…

That’s why we are delighted to let you know that we have improved our online credit card payment system and partnered with an improved processor so that making a payment should now be trouble-free!

Due to the better service we can now provide to you using our new credit card system, credit cards are now our preferred payment option.

Thinking of upgrading?
If you have been thinking of upgrading, why not do it now? Don’t forget we offer a 14 day full refund if you change your mind!

Upgraded accounts enjoy larger log-sizes, daily email reports, secure tracking and the option to include your own logo within your StatCounter account.

Free Members
Don’t forget! We don’t impose an upgrade on you. We run our free service, because we want to help you grow. As your traffic grows, and as your needs grow, we hope you’ll upgrade. It’s as simple as that!

Confused about You say Tomato?

Nasty Adverts - HELP!

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Hi Folks,

Just under 1 year ago, we explained how different adverts are shown on StatCounter in different parts of the world. This means that here in StatCounter HQ, we don’t actually get to see every single advert shown to our members.

We like to think of StatCounter as a “family show” so we do our best to screen out any nasty adverts. Despite our efforts, however, we had a report last night of another nasty advert being shown on our site to a member in the United States… so now we are asking for your help to eliminate these offensive ads!

nasty advert

If you spot a nasty advert on StatCounter here’s what to do:

  1. Right click on the advert and select either Copy Shortcut (IE) or Copy Link Location (Netscape) to capture the URL of the advert.

    (Please make sure only to RIGHT CLICK on the advert - left clicking would result in you inadvertently supporting the ad.)

  2. Paste this link or URL into a text editor (e.g. Word or Notepad) to keep it safe until you’re ready to paste it in our blog.
  3. Please then come here to our blog and post a comment and tell us:
    • The type of advert i.e. what’s offensive about it.
    • Where the advert was on the StatCounter site e.g. on the left hand side of the homepage.
    • Paste the URL info you captured earlier into the comment also. (This allows us to block the advert)

As we explained last year, StatCounter advertising revenue is used to fund our free service - but we only want the nicest, best behaved ads on our site…

Many thanks for your help folks - together let’s stamp out these nasty ads!

By the way, when we say “nasty” adverts we mean any adverts that contain nudity, suggestive poses, sex, sex phonelines, escort services etc. All the kind of things that WE don’t want and YOU don’t expect to stumble upon when you are looking at StatCounter!

Update August 2008
Hi all,

Due to the amount of spam comments we’re receiving on this post, we’re now closing off the comments.

If you spot any nasty adverts, please post the details in the comments to any of our latest blog posts and we will be happy to take care of them.

Thank you!

Could it be you?!

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Hi folks,

We’re hiring!

Applications were open until midnight GMT on Sunday 20 April - APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED - thank you to all who applied. Applicants will initially be hired for a trial period. Positions are not expected to be permanently filled for a number of weeks. We will update you as things proceed.

We are looking to expand our customer support team.

We want to hire one full-time (approx 40 hours per week) or two part-time representatives.

image2.jpg

What does the role involve?

  • Answering support tickets and dealing with member queries via email, phone and our support system
  • Referring the more difficult or complex queries to the appropriate area
  • Helping members to install StatCounter code
  • Proactively suggesting ways to improve StatCounter and the service we provide
  • Actively monitoring warning systems and immediately reporting any issues
  • Upgrading and downgrading accounts
  • Adding queries and resolutions to the StatCounter Knowledge Base

What knowledge/skills/abilities are required?

  • Friendly, patient & sincere
  • Fluent in English. Foreign languages are a bonus.
  • Highly knowledgeable about StatCounter from a user perspective i.e. understand all the features etc
  • Comfortable with basic HTML and simple website updates via FTP
  • An excellent communicator (email, im, phone, support system, forum)
  • Willing to ask questions and open to learning
  • Able to establish priorities, handle occasional and recurring issues and work independently without strong supervision
  • Available on Yahoo Messenger during working hours
  • Able to work during office hours in CST (that’s GMT -5 hours)

Other Information

As a part of the StatCounter Team, you will represent StatCounter to the outside world so it is vitally important that you share our beliefs when it comes to our members and how we look after them. Our focus is on delivering the best possible service and value for money to our members. We are committed to getting work done quickly and efficiently and we need your ideas to help us grow. We love to change and adapt to improve the service we offer.

Note that this job provides a “work from home” opportunity, so you must have a stable broadband connection (preferably with a static IP address) and telephone. Salary is negotiable depending on hours worked, experience etc.

How do I apply?

If you would be interested in joining our team by becoming a customer support rep for StatCounter, please send your résumé to jobs-statcounter-com with the @ and . appropriately placed! Don’t forget to include your StatCounter username and salary expectation.

IMPORTANT! You must include the following in the subject line of your email “Customer Rep” - otherwise your email won’t get to us.

Any questions? Please post them below!

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Or as we say in Ireland Lá le Phádraig Shona Duit!

shamrock2.jpg

Some Irish words of wisdom:

Is maith an t-anlann an t-ocras.
Hunger is a good sauce.

Moladh luath agus cáineadh mall.
Be quick to praise and slow to criticise.

Tús maith leath na hoibre.
A good start is half the work.

Má bhíonn tú ar lorg cara gan locht, beidh tú gan chara go deo.
If you seek a friend without fault, you will be without one forever.

Cuir síoda ar ghabhar ach is gabhar i gcónaí é.
Dress a goat in silk and it’s still a goat.

Is fearr an sláinte ná an táinte.
Health is better than wealth.

And from this day on may you always have these blessings…
A soft breeze when summer comes, a warm fireside in winter, and the comfort of a true friend.

The StatCounter Team wishes you all a very happy St Patrick’s Day!

Happy Holidays!

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

collage7.jpg

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, our members, for your support throughout 2007, to wish you joy and peace this festive season and every health and happiness in the New Year!

From all of us to all of you…

Merry Christmas!
Nollaig Shona Dhuit!
Kellemes Karácsonyi Ünnepeket!
Joyeux Noël!
Feliz Navidad!
Buone Feste Natalizie!
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
Ajmel altehani bemonasebt almīlad wa helol alseneh aljedīdah!
I’d Miilad Said Oua Sana Saida!
Krismas ki subhkamna!

PS: StatCounter is not sending Christmas cards this year - instead donations have been made to charity:
Barnardos
CRY
St Jude’s Hospital

Calling all Volunteers!!

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Hi Folks,

New StatCounter System - In Beta

We have been working on the new and improved StatCounter SC4 system…now we need your help to test it.

A lot of changes have been made ‘under the hood’ and won’t be immediately apparent; however some of the immediate benefits include:

  • Faster Loading Keyword and Country Stats
  • Exit Link Stats
  • Download Stats

Testing… Testing… 123…

MOST importantly the new system paves the way for other exciting new features … so watch this space!

How do I try out SC4?

It’s easy!

You need to create a new test project. This code should be added underneath your existing StatCounter code.

Note that you should retain your existing StatCounter code for now… Once the new system is fully operational we’ll convert all projects over to SC4 automatically.

To get started:

  • Login to StatCounter with the “remember me” option
  • Point your browser at this URL
    http://my.statcounter.com/project/standard/add.php?sc4=1
  • If successful the form should now read “BETA TEST SC4 PROJECT SETTINGS” then proceed as normal to install this new code below your current code.

(Note that if you logout and login again you will be directed back to the current StatCounter system.)

Thanks for your help with this - and we’d be delighted to have your feedback posted to the comments of this blog post.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback so far. As the comments are getting a bit crowded we’ve created a new forum for you to discuss your ideas. Please click here to get talking about SC4! (Note: you need to register a forum account in order to post.)

Let the testing begin!

StatCounter Team