Bye-bye SiteMeter [Updated]

My wife loves looking through the SiteMeter stats on her blog (Linda's Thoughts). Today she was frustrated to find she can no longer access those stats. SiteMeter redid their user interface for free accounts, so that it is very difficult to actually access the stats. I waded through it for a while trying to find the stats, and someone as computer illiterate as my wife would never find it.

So, I told I'd have to build her a traffic meter. She jumped in glee that I'd be able to do that. I actually had on partial built a few years ago, trying to build something like SiteMeter just about the time SiteMeter came out. My problem was the massive amount of space needed to store the data. since then I've seen the various methods used to get around that problem and can probably build a nice one that has most if not all the features of SiteMeter. It'll take a while, though since I'm busy with other projects as well, but at least this will have to immediate benefits.

No, I doubt I'll make it public since my hosting situation wouldn't allow the kind of bandwidth required for a widespread us of a script like that. But, once built, it could be something I could use someday to earn extra money. It'll just depend on whether I can get back to the point of having my own server again.

In the mean time SiteMeter will be gone since if the stats are unreadable, it's of no real purpose anymore.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one who disliked the new SiteMeter. They quickly rolled back their script to the old format today.

Posted by Danny Carlton at September 14, 2008 7:51 AM