File Extensions To Ignore

File Extensions To Ignore

A typical web page is made up of many individual files. Beyond the HTML page itself, each graphic element is a separate .GIF, .PNG, or .JPG file. As the browser requests these elements, the web server will record them in the logfile. Most of these requests can be ignored by ClickTracks because the containing HTML page request is all that is required to determine visitor behavior patterns. Stripping the requests has two benefits:

1.	Increased performance because much data from the original logfile is not analyzed

2.	Better visitor behavior data because reports show the actions initiated by visitors and are not clouded by requests made by the browser for components within the page.

Files are ignored based on file name extension, ie .GIF. This process takes place within ClickTracks as part of two separate phases:

logfile Importing

When you import the logfiles they are stored in an internal format known as the normalized format. During importing each request from the log is compared to a list of extensions contained in a file named 'FileExtensionsToIgnore.txt'. Although you can edit this file (it's inside the 'data' folder in the same location as the ClickTracks_Server.exe program) you should be aware that any file extensions ignored during importing are permanently removed from the dataset. Although you could re-import the logfiles this is usually a tedious process and should be avoided. It is therefore wise to list files inside 'FileExtensionsToIgnore.txt' only when you are certain they will never be required for analysis or used for labeling visitors.

The file extensions listed in FileExtensionsToIgnore.txt by default are:

.jpg

.jpeg

.gif

.png

.ico

.css

.js

.jar

.exe

.mid

.ida

.class

.bmp

.vbs