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[DigitalPoint] App for Cloudflare® 1.8.8
- Thread starter digitalpoint
- Start date
digitalpoint
Well-known member
Nope... can't have it both ways. Can't have a page be cached at the network edge and also make the request go to your origin server. The whole point of guest page caching is to make the site fast and the request not need to go to your server. And with your server not seeing the request, it doesn't know how many times it was seen in cache.
Honestly, I think thread view numbers (along with a lot of other things like members online) is pretty dated/pointless these days. Who cares how many users are on the site or how many times a thread has been viewed? At least not for end users... site owners/admins sure... but you have things like Google Analytics (or whatever else) for that.
Mike Fara
Active member
Unless there was some weird way to put the counter on the edge and pull it down later..
digitalpoint
Well-known member
More effort than it’s worth, imo. I’d be more inclined to spend time removing thread view counters from XenForo (I mean if I had to pick one or the other based on value).
Mike Fara
Active member
But shouldn't a successful community know how many people have read something? Unless the counters are not accurate, than yeah not needed... I'm thinking about it now and the real number may be so inaccurate that I would like the option to remove it if possible. I am not sure what to do.
digitalpoint
Well-known member
Ya, but the counters (even without guest page caching) are inaccurate). It's based on an HTTP request, not a human being viewing the thread... so the counters are including bots and spiders. Probably not super useful at that point when it's possible most of the "views" are by non-humans to begin with.
I do agree that analytics is useful, but...
- It shouldn't be given to normal users, it's more appropriate for site owners/admins only.
- View counters aren't analytics, it's one step up from page view counter widgets from the 90s.
Not so coincidentally, things like Google Analytics work just fine with guest page caching enabled (because it's not based purely on an HTTP request being made to your origin server... which could be non-human traffic).
digitalpoint
Well-known member
It is used if someone is sorting a forum by Views (does anyone do that though?)… not sure on the Trending Widget, never used it or looked into it.
Like I said, “Views” is very misleading… it’s not actually a view, it’s an HTTP request. I could increase the “views” on this thread by 1,000,000 by clicking a button and none of those would be viewed by anyone.
Bottom line is that if you feel that your view counter is more important that guest page caching, don’t use guest page caching. You can’t (easily) have it both ways where you serve content from a cache upstream from your origin server, but then also need a request to your origin server to log the HTTP request.
