PHP Custom Web Statistics – Part 4: graphing the statistics Support
In the final part of this article on creating custom web statistics using PHP and MySQL, we're going improve on the display of our custom web statistics.
In the final part of this article on creating custom web statistics using PHP and MySQL, we're going improve on the display of our custom web statistics by adding some graphs, which give an easy to read display showing the best and worst months of the year, or days of the month for example.
In this tutorial, we'll first give a brief overview of the GD image library, and how to check whether it’s installed, as well as how to install the library if its not already part of your PHP installation. Then we'll look the PHP image functions that are necessary to perform the various drawing operations used to create the dynamic graphs. Finally, we'll adapt the month.php and year.php pages to display custom graphs of the relevant hit data.
Please note that this article forms part of a chapter in the DMXzone e-book PHP Web Applications for Dreamweaver: Juicy Solutions for the Busy Developer.
Gareth has a range of skills, covering many computer and internet related subjects. He is proficient in many different languages including ASP and PHP, and is responsible for the setup and maintenance of both Windows and Linux servers on a daily basis.
In his daily web development work he uses the complete range of Macromedia software, including Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Fireworks MX and Director to build a number of websites and applications. Gareth has a close relationship with Macromedia, and as a member of Team Macromedia Dreamweaver, he has worked closely in the development of Dreamweaver, and was a beta tester for Dreamweaver MX.
On a daily basis he provides support for users in the Macromedia forums, answering questions and providing help on a range of different web related subjects. He has also written a number of free and commercial extensions for Dreamweaver MX, to further extend its capabilities using its native JavaScript API’s or C++.
As a web host, Gareth has worked with a range of different servers and operating systems, with the Linux OS as his personal favourite. Most of his development work is done using a combination of Linux, Apache and MySQL and he has written extensively about setting up this type of system, and also running Apache and MySQL under Windows.
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