ShelaghG,

How "completely" are you talking?

If you mean invisible for visitors? (Modify _main.php and remove all references to stats).

If you mean complete erradication of all stats in the blog, in the back-office, from the code & database table removal ... I don't know the answer and someone else will have to help.

-Scott ;)

I mean complete eradication :) I've already removed them from my page but I don't want b2 to collect stats at all, if that's possible.

Hi ShelaghG,

I just did that way:

remove this snippet form _main.php in every skin you use.
Then b2 wil stop collecting stats.

<?php 
		log_hit();	// log the hit on this page
		debug_info();	// output debug info if requested
?>

I did it, for my web-account provides (appache)logfiles too, why twice collecting, that CAN be reason for an attack to mysql-daemon, when the t**-Com** runs again...

mikel

ShelaghG,

Nicely designed site(s) BTW! I love the simplicity and bold images (sunflower my favorite skin).

Seems radical to want to remove every shred of statisical information. Reason? (I can think of two primary ones - performance/DB-size issues and security). Is that it?

Hopefully, someone else (like EdB or Isaac), who have a more intimate understanding of the GUTS, will respond.

Wiping out the log_hit() bit will pretty much do the deed without any undesirable side effects. One should also also look at the files in the xmlsrv folder and remove that line where it is found because somewhere in that folder is where rss hits are logged. Sorry, but I've not got the appropriate folder and files opened in front of me at this time. It's a small folder so searching shouldn't be a big issue.

ShelaghG,

I just knew Ed would have an answer!

BTW, I checked out that iStock photo agency. Good deal! (So, in the end, I can't help you, but you helped me! THanks).

Thanks, Ed

it's the last row of EVERY file there, without xmlrpc.php.

wish you big Egss or whatever today

mikel

The main reason I wanted to know was that I run a small hosting company and a couple of my customers run b2, in addition to myself. Recently we've been experiencing performance issues and I finally tracked it down to mysql processes. One of them doesn't use her b2 stats at all and has never done any maintenance on them so they were busy recording all the referrer spam. I started watching the mysql processes and on her account b2 seemed to be copying referrer tables back and forth almost constantly. If no-one else was doing anything on the server the load wasn't bad but as soon as there were processes happening on other accounts too, eg, comments being posted, the load was getting higher than I'm happy with. Since I posted the original question I convinced her to perform some maintenance on her stats and the CPU load is back down to normal limits however as she doesn't use her b2 stats at all it makes sense to disable them if possible. Thanks for the advice, I'll pass it on :) I noticed that a feature request has been submitted to be able to turn stats on and off from the backend, I hope this will appear sooner rather than later.

Scott - thank you for your kind words. I don't think of myself as much of a designer but I was particularly pleased with the sunflower skin so it's nice to hear when other people like it too :D

Shelagh

If you stop recording stats, I think the spammers will continue hitting that page anyway, right? Most of my spammers are actually targeting the stats page itself. I took out links to the stats page, but they still find it.

Is it possible to rename the stats address? So instead of

.../blog/index.php?disp=stats

we have something like

.../blog/index.php?disp=secretword

Is this hardwired into b2evolution, or is it something I can change in a few places and solve my problems?

sky captain wrote:

If you stop recording stats, I think the spammers will continue hitting that page anyway, right? Most of my spammers are actually targeting the stats page itself. I took out links to the stats page, but they still find it.

That's only partially true. They'll hit you when they know you use b2evolution, or probably any other blog software for that matter. How do they know? They google certain phrases that are stock parts of different blog apps. You can completely destroy the stats page by deleting _stats.php from your skins/skinname file and they will *still* hit you. Once they know you exist you're fair game whether they get on your page or not.

sky captain wrote:

Is it possible to rename the stats address? So instead of
.../blog/index.php?disp=stats
we have something like
.../blog/index.php?disp=secretword
Is this hardwired into b2evolution, or is it something I can change in a few places and solve my problems?

Yes - it is both possible and hardwired. NOTHING is really hardwired if you have a keyboard eh? I did it a long time ago, but I still get hit regularly by the spammers. They no longer find disp=stats, but they find me anyway.

I'll finally get off my lazy butt and post how to change it to disp=secretword in the plugins and hacks forum (and probably the antispam subforum), but don't expect too much from it. Check out the antispam subforum and you'll see a lot of totally cool methods to nail them to a wall. This trick will be but another method. I prefer to feed them an auto-403 page from my hacks.php file, but others find a better response by using thier .htaccess file. If .htaccess is something you can play with then take a good look in that direction. If not then (a) you're where I'm at and (b) you can still keep ahead of the slimy cretins.

It'll take a while to read through what's in the antispam subforum in the plugins and hacks forum, but it'll be worth your while. What you spend now will save you both time and bandwidth and server cycles down the road.

Favorite Final Thought: BAN THEM! REPORT THEM! DELETE THEM! You need no hackage of any kind to do that, so do it - even if you hack heavily.

Worth to read:

• [url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=5245]CPU Usage Reduction Hack: Auto pruning of old stats[/url]

• [url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=5243]CPU Usage Reduction Suggestions: Antispam[/url]

[*][url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?p=25337#25337]Spam: an IP based approach[/url][/list:u]