Comments on: Speed Up Google Analytics with urchin.js

By: DaveA

DaveA — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:16:15 +0000

urchin.js is evil. The more I review this with proxies, the more I hate it.

By: vahur

vahur — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:41:43 +0000

A good (fast) idea in addition to host ga.js in your own server is to merge multiple .js files together so that there will be less http requests. I have multiple .js files, and after editing some of them i merge multiple files together and compact the contents so that the original source remains untouched.

By: Majika

Majika — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 14:39:35 +0000

Hi, First off great work, This is a bit of a n00b! question as I am crap at Cron Jobs and shell scripts all together (kinda wonder how I have a website to begin with) well anyway, I am a bit baffeled about the

#!/bin/sh
rm /web/user/websites/askapache.com/z/j/urchin.js
cd /web/user/websites/askapache.com/z/j/
wget http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js
chmod 644 /web/user/websites/askapache.com/z/j/urchin.js
cd ${OLDPWD}
exit 0;

I think I would fill the script out like this Please tell me if this is correct ?

#!/bin/sh
rm /web/sellitor/websites/site/z/j/urchin.js
cd /web/sellitor/websites/site/z/j/
wget http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js
chmod 644 /web/sellitor/websites/site/z/j/urchin.js
cd ${OLDPWD}
exit 0;

is this correct? or do I have to change the '/websites/' to one of my sub-domains whichever one I am using Google Analytics with ? for instance I would place '/shop/' in place of '/websites/' Cheers,

By: AskApache

AskApache — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:05:47 +0000

@ Phillip

Thats a very good method and will work for most people, but I personally am kinda fanatical about security, so that means each of my sites have their own username, usergroup, and are totally separated from one another, so if one falls, the others don't go like dominoes.

By: Phillip

Phillip — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:31:49 +0000

Neat idea on the cron job. Wouldn't it be simpler to symlink to one copy of urchin.js from all of your project directories? Then no matter how many sites you have using it, you don't have to change your shell script. I do that a lot with code that I want to share across multiple sites. I very much dislike having to make the same change in multiple places.

Just a thought.

Peace.

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:55:04 +0000

Where is it getting the values for things like:
{OLDPWD}
and
{HOME}

Thanks

By: AskApache

AskApache — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:12:58 +0000

@ brad

Yo, you could in fact combine urchin.js with your sites other .js file. Check out my apache.js file to see how much you can cram into 1 file. Once a browser goes to any page on my site 1 time, they will never have to request that file again, it is cached forever and they dont even send If-Modified or Compare E-Tags because I removed the Last-Modified and E-Tags from my .js file. So what if I update the .js? I just rename the .js file in my .html (which is only cached for 7200 seconds and then DOES revalidate) and presto! My site is sooo fast!

By: AskApache

AskApache — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:37:24 +0000

I am thrilled to learn that some genius over at Drupal has already created some really interesting code to accomplish this task in a simpler way. Very cool, check it out

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:23:11 +0000

Not to be a pain, but did you consider the caching benefits had by serving the file from Google's servers? Once you visit one site that loads http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js it is in the browser's cache for subsequent hits to that site and even when hitting other sites that also use Google Analytics. This is similar to the reason that Yahoo hosts their YUI library files on Yahoo servers for all sites to link to and benefit from caching. With this scheme in place the most a browser should have to do is check the freshness of the file (and usually receives an HTTP 304). Regardless, Google Analytics should be loaded after all of your core site content files and thus shouldn't impact apparent load time for users in the least. The stated need for additional speed is purely pedantic on the part of those who watch the status bar ("Transferring data from google-analytics.com") -- hint: less than 10% of normal people.

By: bigtime

bigtime — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:16:02 +0000

In your shell script it may be a good idea to wget the js file first with a different name, force a copy over the existing js file and then remove the temporary download file. This way you don't risk getting caught without a js file during one of those google "lag" times. for example...

#!/bin/sh
cd /web/user/websites/askapache.com/z/j/
wget -O urchin.latest.js http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js
chmod 644 /web/user/websites/askapache.com/z/j/urchin.latest.js
cp --force urchin.latest.js urchin.js
rm /web/user/websites/askapache.com/z/j/urchin.latest.js
cd ${OLDPWD}
exit 0;