You can still use WhosOn to track visitors and show your chat availability on web pages that do not allow Javascript to be executed. This is useful if you want to track visitors via Email signatures, Blog pages, eBay pages etc. In fact any page that allows regular HTML images to be shown can be tracked by WhosOn.

 

Simply request the image file 'stat.gif' directly from the WhosOn gateway:

 

<img border="0" src="http://{gateway}/stat.gif?d={domain}&p={page}&response=g">

 

Where {gateway} is the Gateway DNS/IP Address, {domain} is the domain name for the site in WhosOn and {page} is a page identifier (the page name that will show in WhosOn whenever the image is requested).

 

The WhosOn Gateway will return the graphic defined for the site with the given {domain} name. The on-line graphic will be returned if any WhosOn Client users are on-line. The off-line graphic will be returned otherwise.

 

The page request will show instantly in WhosOn.

 

The '&response=g' must be included if you want the on/off line image to be shown. If this is not included then the page will still be tracked in WhosOn but no visible graphic will be returned by the WhosOn Gateway.

 

Example:

 

<img border="0" src="http://195.62.224.1:8080/stat.gif?d=www.mysite.com&p=index.htm&response=g">

 

This example assumes the WhosOn Gateway is listening on external IP 195.62.224.1, port 8080. The page will show against the WhosOn site with the domain 'www.mysite.com'. The page name will show as 'index.htm'.

 

You can wrap the image in a standard hyperlink to the chatstart.htm to launch the chat window when the image is clicked, eg:

 

<a href="http://195.62.224.1/chat/chatstart.htm?domain=www.mysite.com">

<img border="0" src="http://195.62.224.1:8080/stat.gif?d=www.mysite.com&p=index.htm&response=g">

</a>

 

Note: When using this method the visitors will be tracked by their IP address only and you cannot send 'invite' requests. When using the Javascript method the visitor is tracked by IP address and a unique cookie value.

 

Query String Parameters

 

The following querystrings can be passed via the stat.gif:

 

 

Tracking Without A Querystring

Some sites do not allow an image to be embedded with a querystring (Eg: MySpace), so the above technique wont work. WhosOn fortunately allows another method. Simply embed the image:

 

<img border="0" src="http://{gateway}/{domain}.gif">

 

Where {domain} is the site domain name as setup in WhosOn.

 

Example:

 

<a href="http://195.62.224.1/chat/chatstart.htm?domain=www.myspace.com">

<img border="0" src="http://195.62.224.1:8080/www.myspace.com.gif">

</a>

 

WhosOn will read the domain name from the image file name. You cannot pass a page name with this method so all visits will show against the same 'default' page in WhosOn.