Feature request: Download count

orinEsque · Post by **orinEsque** » December 23rd, 2023, 23:02

Cuz it would be interesting to know.

BobT · Post by **BobT** » January 29th, 2024, 07:57

+1 for this. Come on, Rusty!
Considering the notoriety that NoAlphabets and this forum got recently, there will be a LOT of lurkers. Many of those might not trust the mods, but would trust them more if they see tonnes of other people downloading them.

It's NPC / Herd-tier but people tend to gravitate to what's "popular".
Allow sorting by download count too, of course.

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » January 29th, 2024, 08:01

BobT wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2024, 07:57
+1 for this. Come on, Rusty!
Considering the notoriety that NoAlphabets and this forum got recently, there will be a LOT of lurkers. Many of those might not trust the mods, but would trust them more if they see tonnes of other people downloading them.

It's NPC / Herd-tier but people tend to gravitate to what's "popular".
Allow sorting by download count too, of course.

The issue is we don't collect any analytics at all, and I suspect most users prefer this. I can't get the data when requesting the file because it's mirrored by a CDN, and therefore would only get incremented when/if the file becomes stale in the CDN cache.
I could collect the information when clicking the download links, but I don't know what percentage of all downloads this would capture as it wouldn't include any direct URL downloads.

That is, most other sites don't allow users to just share download URLs like we do, bypassing using the site itself.

BobT · Post by **BobT** » January 29th, 2024, 08:05

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2024, 08:01
That is, most other sites don't allow users to just share download URLs like we do, bypassing using the site itself.

Hmm, no way to have it do a quick redirect? Even if the user doesn't "see" it. Purely to increment the download counter.

There's some VERY varied and popular mods here. It would just be amazing to see just 'how' popular. Especially considering the amount of non-members who will be downloading.

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » January 29th, 2024, 08:08

BobT wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2024, 08:05

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2024, 08:01
That is, most other sites don't allow users to just share download URLs like we do, bypassing using the site itself.
Hmm, no way to have it do a quick redirect? Even if the user doesn't "see" it. Purely to increment the download counter.

There's some VERY varied and popular mods here. It would just be amazing to see just 'how' popular. Especially considering the amount of non-members who will be downloading.

It's built ontop of the same file hosting service used for non-mod things, so this is a no-go. I'll probably just collect the data from actual clicks rather than direct downloads.

BobT · Post by **BobT** » January 29th, 2024, 08:12

Thanks Rusty. If it's not too much work, this would be quite a big win I think. These mods are probably getting pretty popular.

If I was more of a web dev rather than a desktop software dev, I'd be happy to help you with some of this stuff.