current
download:
Package with Installer/Loader. If the above
does not run on your machine, download this one:
Site Sounds (Website
Visitor Notification) by Bruce K. Silverthorne
Your Digital Doorbell
Site Sounds Website Visitor Notification is a
fun and useful program used to visually and aurally monitor the traffic on
your website. Site Sounds consists of a small program that sits in your
system tray, listening for incoming connections on the port your specify.
You place one line of HTML code in the offsite pages you want to be
monitored. When a visitor views those pages, the program plays a sound of
your choosing to alert you. A small, pop-up window can also be made to
appear at the bottom of your screen as a visual form of notification. The
date, IP of the visitor and the URL of the page visited is logged into a
list box on the program screen in real time.
Further,
an option of the program allows the user to assign a unique sound (.wav)
to any web page. This gives the user the ability to audibly, and in real
time, track the visitor as he moves through his website by the sounds that
are played. The user could even record his own voice to identify certain
pages, and the program will play back the unique voice recordings each
time a visitor enters those pages.
A
webmaster may use Site Sounds simply to get an idea how his website is
performing on a certain day without having to open server logs or go to
his web statistics service. He might also use Site Sounds to give real
time aural or visual indication of the time and frequency a visitor goes
to a few key pages, such as a signup page or payment page for a product he
sells.
Webmasters with more than one website can assign sounds or visual cues to
indicate the traffic on each site independently. The program is also a lot
of fun! Sitting in the office hearing as it occurs the traffic on your
website is like being a shopkeeper and hearing each customer enter the
store when that jungle sounds. It gives you a more personal connection to
your website visitors.
Requirements:Win32, static IP (dynamic IP's can be used with ASP
pages), and an open port for incoming connections, Internet Explorer 5 or
higher needed for some functions.
Features:
- Built in dynamic dyndns.org updater. If the user does not
have a static IP, he can sign up for a free account at dyndns.org and
obtain a dynamic IP name, such as yourname.homedns.org. WNV will
automatically update this IP with the current user IP, and the code
which is inserted into webpages to communicate with Site Sounds will
always point to the users current IP.
- For those who have ASP pages they want to track, do not have
a static IP and don't want the dyndns.org service, the program supplies
ASP pages that are uploaded to the user's server that are used to
connect to a database. Each time the user executes Site Sounds locally,
the program updates remote the database with his current IP. Each web
page he wants to track on his site will contain an include
reference to one of these ASP pages, which takes his current IP from the
database. This is very easy to set up.
- Option to turn off sound and/or visual cues.
- Automatically detects when online or offline and connects or
reconnects when appropriate.
- Option to specify port on which the program listens for
incoming connections.
- Option to run when Windows starts.
- Tray icon.
- "Latest Events" window.
- Sortable listbox containing the current session's remote
webpage activity.
- Windows master sound volume slider integrated into the
program.
Main Screen
The main screen show the connection log window and a list box
containing the date, time, IP and URL of the pages visited. The "Server
Notification Options" button take you to the setup dialog.
Setup
The main setup page displays all the controls
necessary to set up normal operation.
Tray Notification: A popup window will be
displayed when a visitor enters the website. This window is non-obtrusive,
and smoothly moves up the screen from the bottom for two seconds and then
back down. The window shows the page URL that has just been accessed and
the visitors IP.
Audible Notification: Specify that a
sound will be played when a visitor enters your website. Specify the
default sound that will be played if a page is not specified in the
following section
URL Specific Sounds: Associate specific
pages with certain sounds. The entire URL need not be given, only a string
within the URL.
There are four icons available: Add Sounds, Delete Selected Sound in
the List, Play Selected Sound in the List and Adjust Master Volume of
Selected Sound. The first three are self explanatory. The Adjust Master
Volume icon brings up a dialog box with the currently selected sound file.
The user may through this box use a slider to adjust the Windows sound
volume.
The "Server Settings" button on the Main Screen
takes you to a dialog where the port number and ASP specific settings are
changed.
You must
configure your computer to allow incoming connections on the port
specified in order for WNV to work. By default, this port number is port
80. This is the default Windows port for local HTTP web server
connections. If you have a firewall running, you must configure it to
accept incoming connections on the port you specify here.
If you
have the Windows XP firewall installed on your connection, Go to Start
> Connect to > Show All Connections. Select the connection
your normally use, right click on the icon, and select "Properties."
Select the "Advanced" tab. If "Protect my computer and network by
limiting or preventing access to this computer from the internet" is
checked, click on the "Settings" button. Place a check mark beside
Webserver (HTTP). Your computer name is normally displayed in the "Name
of IP address..." box. The port number should read "80." Select OK. If
your computer does not display these settings and are having trouble with
this, please e-mail me at
bsilver@poetworld.net and explain your problem.
The main
purpose of a firewall is to prevent access to software which is sneaked
onto your computer without your knowledge (such as Trojan horses). Such
software could allow others to connect to your computer without your
knowledge or permission. Since a firewall blocks all connections except
the few which you specifically consent to, it will render it almost
impossible for an attacker to connect to your computer.
If you
know what application a certain port is used by, and what that application
does, it is usually secure to open that port. For example, if you open
port 80, and have the visitor notification program running, all connection
on that port will go to the visitor notification program. Since this
program is trusted (you can look at its source to ensure it does nothing
other than alert you of the connections), allowing access to it across the
internet does not open your computer to any security risks. In fact the
program closes the incoming connections as soon as it plays the
sound/displays the popup.
The "Website Details" section is enabled by checking "ASP
sites with non-static IP's." If you use ASP pages on your site that
you want to track, but do not have a static IP, or do not want to use the
free dyndns.org service, then this will allow you to use your dynamic IP
with your ASP pages.
IP Script Path: Enter the path on your website where you have
uploaded the ASP pages provided. Those pages are:
notify.asp: Page that
writes your IP to the database
sendip.asp: The page that
sends your UP to Site Sounds by an Include reference in your page
notifyip.mdb: The database
that will contain the IP address of your connection
To use this function, insert the following tag at the bottom of your
webpage just above the /BODY tag:
<!--#include file="notify.asp"-->
Also, anywhere on the page, insert the following line:
<img src="http://monitoring-ip/img.jpg width=0
height=0>
This
code must not be altered in any way! The "monitoring-ip" variable is
dynamically updated from the database.
This
references a file on your machine, but the file it references need not
exist. This is simply to send a request to your IP and trigger your
notification.
After
the ASP pages are uploaded to your server, ask the site manager to give
Read/Write permissions to the file "notifyip.mdb." After this is done,
upon starting Site Sounds, the status box will indicate that it is sending
sending your IP to your website. It should indicate "Done" after updating
if it was successful.
Setup of non ASP pages
Your non-ASP pages are very simple to set up. If you already have a
static IP, simply insert the line:
<img src="http://youripnumber/img.jpg
width=0 height=0>
anywhere on your page, where the type in green indicates
your IP. You may use the hostname or IP name.
DYNDNS.ORG setup
If you do not have a static IP, sign up for a
dyndns.org hostname. This will allow you to assign any IP number you wish
to a name that never changes. For example, you could choose the name
ddsa.homedns.org. This name can be associated with any IP number you
choose, such as 3.34.22.44. If you don't have a static IP, using this
hostname in Site Sounds dyndns.org automatic update will allow your web
pages to always point to your current IP.
If you subscribe to
dyndns.org, insert your IP hostname, such as:
<img src="http://ddsa.homedns.org/img.jpg
width=0 height=0>
into your web pages. Site Sounds will, when your IP
changes contact dyndns.org and automatically update your record with your
new IP, causing ddsa.homedns.org to
always point to your local machine.
bsilver@poetworld.net