How to make your own MySpace tracker
Myspace does not allow trackers, but here is a guide to how you install your own stealthy tracker to see who visits your profile. This may be a bit hard to understand for many, but i will try to keep it as simple as possible.
Tools needed:
First of all you need to download this ZIP archive:
http://www.zshare.net/download/461744749ddbbe/
The second thing you will need is web hosting where you can upload the tracker. Please note that it has to support PHP, htaccess, hotlinking and FTP file upload. I dont know of any free web hosting that offers these services, but you can rent web space for around 1 euro per month that can do the trick, or you can pay some more and get a professional web host like for example www.servage.net .
The third and last thing you need is an FTP program, like FileZilla (free).
Instaling of the tracker:
Unzip the 4 files in the ZIP archive, and open the file called ".htaccess" with notepad. In this file there is some code saying:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule \mypicture.jpg$ http://yourhost.com/image.php [R,L]
Replace "yourhost.com" with the address of your web server.
Now, upload all 4 files from the ZIP archive to the web server via your FTP client.
After successful upload, you must change chmod of "image.php" to 755. In many FTP clients (like FileZilla), this can be done by rightclicking on the file when it has been uploaded to the server and edit the file properties. "log.txt" must be set to chmod 666 (is done in the same way).
Somewhere on your myspace page, add the image code:
where "yourhost.com" must be replaced with the address of your own web server. It is important that you do not have a file called "mypicture.jpg" on the web server (This will be explained later if you really want to know why).
Now, everytime someone views your profile and thereby loads "mypicture.jpg", information about them will be saved in "log.txt", which you can download from the web server and view whenever you want. Enjoy!
Tips:
You cant see your visitors MySpace ID's, but you can see their IP address, web browser, operating system, time and date of visit, language of the system, and weither the image was viewed from your myspace profile or someone else is linking to your picture. To find out more about who visited your profile, submit their IP address to http://network-tools.com/ and do a "lookup". You will then be presented with info on which country the person is from (sometimes even the city), and which internet service provider they have. This together with the other information (and for example if someone wrote a comment on the same time as the visit was registered) will make you able to identify most of your visitors.
How this works (this is not nessesary to understand in order to use the tracker):
The image "mypicture.jpg" does not actualy exist on your web server. But, the code in the .htaccess file redirects requests for "mypicture.jpg" to "image.php". "image.php" is an invisible script that registers information on who requested "mypicture.jpg" and saves the info to "log.txt" without anyone but you knowing it. It also sends back the data from the image file called "image.jpg" so that the browser thinks that it is actualy recieving "mypicture.jpg" even though it does not exist. In this way, MySpace or others will not find out that you are loging information about them, as all they will ever see is an innocent jpg file. "image.jpg" can be replaced with any image you like, if just it has the filename "image.jpg".
The disadvantage is that you do not get exact informatin on which MySpace user actualy visited your profile, but only information that will make you able to guess who they are with some precision. A solution to this would be to write a tracker in JavaScript, that people could add to their profiles. But since MySpace does not allow JavaScript code in profiles, this would have to be implemented in a flash file, like the visitor maps that many people have. The disadvantage of this method is that MySpace and others will be able to see this code and find out that you are tracking your visitors, and this is why many visitor maps from time to time gets removed from peoples profiles. And in the worst case, they could delete your profile for violating their rules. Therefor, the method i described in this post is the safest one to use at the moment.
Tools needed:
First of all you need to download this ZIP archive:
http://www.zshare.net/download/461744749ddbbe/
The second thing you will need is web hosting where you can upload the tracker. Please note that it has to support PHP, htaccess, hotlinking and FTP file upload. I dont know of any free web hosting that offers these services, but you can rent web space for around 1 euro per month that can do the trick, or you can pay some more and get a professional web host like for example www.servage.net .
The third and last thing you need is an FTP program, like FileZilla (free).
Instaling of the tracker:
Unzip the 4 files in the ZIP archive, and open the file called ".htaccess" with notepad. In this file there is some code saying:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule \mypicture.jpg$ http://yourhost.com/image.php [R,L]
Replace "yourhost.com" with the address of your web server.
Now, upload all 4 files from the ZIP archive to the web server via your FTP client.
After successful upload, you must change chmod of "image.php" to 755. In many FTP clients (like FileZilla), this can be done by rightclicking on the file when it has been uploaded to the server and edit the file properties. "log.txt" must be set to chmod 666 (is done in the same way).
Somewhere on your myspace page, add the image code:
where "yourhost.com" must be replaced with the address of your own web server. It is important that you do not have a file called "mypicture.jpg" on the web server (This will be explained later if you really want to know why).
Now, everytime someone views your profile and thereby loads "mypicture.jpg", information about them will be saved in "log.txt", which you can download from the web server and view whenever you want. Enjoy!
Tips:
You cant see your visitors MySpace ID's, but you can see their IP address, web browser, operating system, time and date of visit, language of the system, and weither the image was viewed from your myspace profile or someone else is linking to your picture. To find out more about who visited your profile, submit their IP address to http://network-tools.com/ and do a "lookup". You will then be presented with info on which country the person is from (sometimes even the city), and which internet service provider they have. This together with the other information (and for example if someone wrote a comment on the same time as the visit was registered) will make you able to identify most of your visitors.
How this works (this is not nessesary to understand in order to use the tracker):
The image "mypicture.jpg" does not actualy exist on your web server. But, the code in the .htaccess file redirects requests for "mypicture.jpg" to "image.php". "image.php" is an invisible script that registers information on who requested "mypicture.jpg" and saves the info to "log.txt" without anyone but you knowing it. It also sends back the data from the image file called "image.jpg" so that the browser thinks that it is actualy recieving "mypicture.jpg" even though it does not exist. In this way, MySpace or others will not find out that you are loging information about them, as all they will ever see is an innocent jpg file. "image.jpg" can be replaced with any image you like, if just it has the filename "image.jpg".
The disadvantage is that you do not get exact informatin on which MySpace user actualy visited your profile, but only information that will make you able to guess who they are with some precision. A solution to this would be to write a tracker in JavaScript, that people could add to their profiles. But since MySpace does not allow JavaScript code in profiles, this would have to be implemented in a flash file, like the visitor maps that many people have. The disadvantage of this method is that MySpace and others will be able to see this code and find out that you are tracking your visitors, and this is why many visitor maps from time to time gets removed from peoples profiles. And in the worst case, they could delete your profile for violating their rules. Therefor, the method i described in this post is the safest one to use at the moment.