Thread

I just created a 404 page for a client’s site yesterday, and today it has 3542 “hits”, according to the Template Manager.  My client is wondering what that means.

From what I understand, “hits” refers to how many times that template was loaded, but is that likely to be an accurate number?  The entire site is not getting that kind of traffic in one day, so how can that template be loaded so many times?

Thanks.

Mike,

You are right. Is refers to how many times a template has been loaded.
To get a clear view of what your 404 is being hit on then refer to your server logs
Are you also pointing to a 404 via your htaccess

Let us know if your server logs turn up anything

No 404 in htaccess.

The 404 template does have embedded templates (header and footer), and those are used throughout the site.  Might it be counting those hits along with the 404 template?

- Mike

The easiest way to figure this out is to actually go and clear out your hit count in those templates, and visit the parent template. What increments? Then you’ll know for certain.

Does that help?

Okay I’ll try that.  Thanks guys.

Let us know what you find out.. We’ll be here.

How do I clear the hit count?

Easiest way is to go to Templates > Your Template Group > Preferences then set the hit counter for the template you wish to clear to 0.

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks Mark.

The hit count increments by 3 when I visit that template, so I guess it’s counting the template plus the two embedded ones.  So maybe when I created it, it added the hit counts of those other two templates?

Anyway, thanks all.
- Mike

I’m fairly certain that the hits count shouldn’t go up like that and shouldn’t count the embedded templates in the 404 hit count.

Check that you don’t have any images in any of the templates that are pointing to non-existent locations etc… If you have any of those or anything else which is trying to load a non-existent URL then these could be contributing to the hit count in that way.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hmm, I don’t see anything on my end, though there is one of those GetSatisfaction flyout tabs on the left.  Maybe that’s doing something.

I’ve never implemented one of those so maybe you could test by taking that tab out of the equation for a while, reset the hit counter for the 404 template and then hit a non-existent page and see what happens to the hit count.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mike,

Take a look at your server logs to see what’s returning 404, as it could be a number of things (non-existant favicon, etc).