Track Your Site Statistics Using ASP.NET's Site Counters Service : Page 2

Tracking Ad Clicks with AdRotator

Figure 3. The images used by the AdRotator control are stored in a new Images folder.

Next you need to manipulate the AdRotator control. The AdRotator control displays advertisements randomly based on an XML file you specify. The XML file contains a list of images and links for various advertisements. Set the AdvertisementFile property of the AdRotator control to '~/advertisements.xml' and the CountClicks property to True. Leave the RowsPerDay property as -1 (default). A value of -1 will use a single row per day to store the click counts.

<asp:AdRotatorID="AdRotator1" Runat="server" 
     AdvertisementFile="~/advertisements.xml" 
     CountClicks="True" />

Here is my advertisements.xml file:

<?xmlversion="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Advertisements>
  <Ad>
    <ImageUrl>~/images/twintower.jpg</ImageUrl>

    <NavigateUrl>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002JUXE2
    </NavigateUrl>
    <AlternateText>Twin Towers</AlternateText>
    <CounterGroup>BannerAdvertisement</CounterGroup>
    <CounterName>TwinTower</CounterName>
  </Ad>
  <Ad>
    <ImageUrl>~/images/nationalgeographic.jpg</ImageUrl>
    <NavigateUrl>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002CHIME
    </NavigateUrl>
    <AlternateText>National Geographic - Roar: Lions of the Kalahari
    </AlternateText>
    <CounterGroup>BannerAdvertisement</CounterGroup>
    <CounterName>NationalGeographic</CounterName>
  </Ad>
</Advertisements>

I have stored the images that the AdRotator control will use in the sample application in a folder named Images. (You can add a new folder to your project by right-clicking on the project name in Solution Explorer and then selecting New Folder from the context menu). Figure 3 shows the Solution Explorer and the images I've used for this example.

When the default.aspx page is loaded in a Web browser, you should see something similar to Figure 4.

Figure 4. The Hyperlink and AdRotator controls are in use.

Figure 5. The ASPNetDB.mdb file is an Access database file located under the Data folder.

Try clicking on the various Hyperlink controls as well as the AdRotator control. To see the different advertisements on the AdRotator control, refresh the page a few times.

After a while, stop your project and examine your Solution Explorer (see Figure 5). Refresh the Data folder (right-click on it and select Refresh Folder). You should see an Access database named ASPNetDB.mdb file located within this folder. By default, in Visual Studio Beta 1, the default Site Counters Provider uses an Access database to store the site statistics. You can change the provider to use a SQL Server via the Web.config file.

Figure 6. Examining the aspnet_SiteCounters table.

Double-click on the ASPNetDB.mdb file to open it (see Figure 6). The aspnet_SiteCounters table will display. If you look at the table carefully, you will notice that the first two rows represent the clicks made by the Books Hyperlink control in the first two minute-intervals (3:59 PM to 4:00 PM and 4:00 PM to 4:01 PM). This corresponds to the value of 1440 set in the RowsPerDay property as each row represents a minute.

The last row records the click made by the AdRotator control. Because I used the default value of -1 for the RowsPerDay property, you will notice that under the StartTime and EndTime fields, only the date is recorded and not the time. In this case, a row represents a single day.

Note that the Site Counters service will only register a click when the AdRotator control is clicked. There are times where you might want to register a view every time the page containing the AdRotator control is refreshed. In this case, you need to set the CountViews property to True.

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