Jan 15 - 2008
Arrow Scripts site updated
Jan 01 - 2008
Work has begun on ATX 2
Jan 01 - 2008
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Dec 10 - 2007
Xmas action launched
Dec 08 - 2007
ATX 1.3 + ATL 3 updated
(atx 1.3.08 & atl 3.16)
Oct 01 - 2007
ATX 1.3 updated
(atx 1.3.07)
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Arrow Scripts
at lite docs
A reference for AT lite
Stats :: Overview
Current Hour
Last 23+ Hours
ID
Domain
In
Out
Clicks
Prod
Return
In
Out
Clicks
Prod
Return
T prod
Unique
Proxy
R.E.D
ID
Every trade has it's own unique id.
This id is used in cookies for example, to track the sites a surfer has seen,
but it's also used in log files, to optimize speed. (writing id numbers is faster
than whole domain names).
Domain
The domain is a stripped version of the URL.
The domain must always be like 'google.com',
without http://, without www, and without anything behind the .com
The domain is used for referrer matching, which means that your trade partners
can send from any url on a specific domain, yet all hits will be counted.
In (current hour)
This row shows the amount of incoming hits the script counted during the current hour.
This number resets every hour. The number is raw and not filtered on anything.
Out (current hour)
This row shows the amount of hits you've sent to a trade during the current hour.
This number resets every hour. Outgoing hits are in theory always unique,
yet exceptions are possible, when surfers don't have cookies enabled,
or for example when they are sent to a trade first due to skimming,
and later on they go to the same trade via the toplist.
Clicks (current hour)
This row shows the amount of clicks the incoming surfers from this trade
have made during the current hour. The clicks included are toplist clicks,
gallery clicks, skimmed links. Basically every click.
Prod (current hour)
Prod stands for 'click productvitity', and is calculated via the formula
clicks / in * 100%
The numbers used in the formula are of the 'current hour' section.
A good prod number is between 200% and 500%.
Lower means that the average surfer doesn't even click 2 links on your site.
This can happen when somebody is popping your site in a console or something,
and the surfer immediately closes the window.
Higher means that the average surfer clicks more than 5 links on your site.
Although many surfers from good trades (from niche-sites in particular) will cick a lot of links,
in general 500+ % is a bit high, and should be considered suspicious.
Hitbots, sitesuckers, linkspiders, etc usually click many (different) links,
not real surfers.
Return (current hour)
Return stands for 'percentage of returned traffic', and is calculated via the formula
out / in * 100%
The numbers used in the formula are of the 'current hour' section.
This number shows you basically how much traffic you're sending / receiving.
A high return is almost never good, since it means you're oversending.
Oversending can be caused by two things:
1. The other trade isn't big enough to return the amounts you're sending
2. Your traffic is of such low quality on the other trade (low prod), that he doesn't
return much. To keep the trade alive you need to oversend to compensate for the low prod.
In both cases you probably want to stop the trade alltogether.
All fields in 'Last 23+ Hours' field
The numbers mean the same as those from the current hour fields.
The only difference is that these fields show the stats of a larger timespan;
The stats of the previous 23 hours, plus the stats in the 'current hour' box.
So minimum this number will show you the stats from 23 hours 0 minutes,
and maximum this number will show you the stats from 23 hours and 59 minutes.
T prod
T prod stands for 'trade productivity', and is calculated via the formula
clicks / out * 100%
The numbers used in the formula are from the 'last 23+ hours' section.
I like to describe this number as 'how much bang you get for your hits'.
The trade prod is a easy yet effective method of measuring the quality of a trade.
Consider the following example:
hits in: 800
hits out: 800
clicks: 200
The trade prod is 200 / 800 * 100% = 25%
Not a very good trade. Although the trade can return what you send him,
his click productivity is very low, thus making this a bad trade.
However, low click productivity doesn't neccesarily mean a trade is bad.
Consider the following example:
hits in: 2500
hits out: 800
clicks: 1200
The click prod is 1200 / 2500 * 100% = 48%
The trade prod is 1200 / 800 * 100% = 150%
Now despite the fact that the click prod of this trade is very low,
the trade doesn't score so bad in the end, because he oversends you a lot,
to compensate for the low quality of his traffic.
This is why it's not smart to just trade on ratios, or just trade on click prods.
But, there are also reasons why it's not smart to trade on just trade prod.
Look back at the last example again, where the trade prod was only high
because the trade sent you so many hits. You don't want to grow on this,
because you will end up with lots of crappy traffic, that will do even worse
on the sites of your trade partners.
That's why Arrow Trader offers you the possibility to de-active trades with a low
click prod, so that even when they compensate by oversending, you still don't return.
Unique
Unique shows you the percentage of unique incoming hits.
This number is calculated via the formula
uniques / in * 100%
Both numbers are based on stats of the last 23+ hours.
A low amount of unique surfers means that you're getting
traffic that has already seen your site before.
This will lower your click prod, and probably also lower your
chances on making a sale.
However, don't freak out when you have a couple of raw surfers,
because some are good. Think about bookmarkers for example.
Bookmarkers however will appear in the 'noref' traderow.
A good way to filter out suspicous trades is by taking the uniques
percentage from the Sub-Totals row, and use this as your average.
Any trade that's (far) below this number isn't as good as the rest,
and should be checked out.
Proxy
Proxy shows you the percentage of proxy hits (detected via browser-settings).
This number is calculated via the formula
proxy hits / in * 100%
Both numbers are based on stats of the last 23+ hours.
Proxies are used by cheaters, but also by real surfers.
For example, big parts of China is behind a proxy, but also all users of AOL.
The average-to-filter rule used for uniques can be works fine here as well
to detect suspicious trades.
It's not very hard to detect cheaters that use open proxies;
Consider the following example:
proxy in: 800
proxy clicks: 1200
This looks okay. On average you have 800 proxy hits in (from the same ip),
that clicked in total 1200 hits.
A cheater (hitbot) is more likely to show up like:
proxy in: 10
proxy clicks: 1200
Another way to see if a multi-incoming proxy ip is from a cheater or not
is by looking at the referrers.
If the proxy ip comes from many different domains, it's more likely that this is
a legit proxy ip with real surfers, then when it's only coming from one domain.
R.E.D
RED stands for Reset Edit Delete.
It quickly allows you to reset, edit and delete trades via the stats overview.
Both the reset and the delete link will first pop-up a 'are you sure' javascript
box before actually performing the action, so you don't have to be affraid
of hitting the links by mistake.
Stats :: Per Trade
ID
Domain
Links
Proxies
Countries
Hits & Clicks
Hits & Clicks
note that at the bottom of every list in the Per Trade section is a link called
'all trades'. This will show the stats of all the trades combined.
Domain
Domain shows the domain you're about to see the stats from
Links
You can give your links a name, to track which links are populair on your site.
To do so, add &l=mylink to your urls.
For example; <a href=/cgi-bin/at/out.cgi?s=80&l=teens&u=http://www.mygallery.com>Teens gallery</a>
The link called 'blank' is counted when no linkname was specified.
Proxies
The proxies module gives you a breakdown per hour of the amount of incoming proxy hits,
the percentage this is of the total amount of incoming hits, and the total amount of incoming hits.
Some hitbots work with short bursts of fake-hits. In that case such a breakdown is easy to pick up
high levels of proxies during a certain hour.
Countries
The countries tab shows you very precise information about the location of your surfers.
It uses a IP to Country database to calculate all the geo-information.
The hits are incoming hits. With large sites it might take a couple of seconds
to calculate this, since all IPs of the last 24 hours are looked up.
Note that this number is more accurate than the US% that the detailed stats overview
shows, since this is module works with a IP2Country database, while the US% is based
on browser settings.
Hits & Clicks
The hits & clicks module gives you a per hour breakdown of a specific trade.
This is handy to see how trades are responding to boosts for example, but it's also
to handy to detect trends, when trades are high and low.
This data is viewable via the 'numbers' row and via the 'Charts' row.
The actual number in the 'Charts' can be found by holding your mouse over a chart.
Stats :: Active
ID
Domain
Click prod
Trade prod
Points
%
Click Prod
As a reference, the click prod of the trade is shown here
Trade Prod
As a reference, the trade prod of the trade is shown here
Points
Every minute the script looks at all the data of a trade,
the amount of incoming hits, outgoing hits, clicks, proxy percentages,
country stats, force levels, and compares this to all other trades.
Then all these numbers are passed on to the intelligent return module.
This module has certain algorithms that takes all these numbers,
and ends up with a amount of points that it gives the trade.
Basically, the more points, the higher the chance a trade will receive hits back.
Disabled trades (either by you or by settings / rules) have 0 points.
%
This row shows you the percentage the amount of points is from a specific trade.
It's for the admin, because a % usually says more than all those points.
The script doesn't use this percentage.
Stats :: History
Date
Hits in
Hits out
Clicks
Click Prod
Is your site getting bigger or smaller? The easiest and best way to tell
is by comparing your current stats with those from previous days.
That's why Arrow Trader creates a history dumb twice a day.
Stats :: Referrers
Referring Domain
Hits in
Referring URL
Hits in
Referring Domain
This table shows you all referring domains of the last 24 hours.
This is handy to see how many SE hits you're getting for example.
For more detailed stats, the full URLs have been included as well.
Referring URL
This table shows you every single referring URl of the last 24 hours.
This can become a rather large table. For that reason the referrers module
will soon be moved to the Per Trade section, so the referrer data can be seen
per trade, per all trades and per all non-trades.
Trades :: Open Signup
Settings for new Trades
Your Site's info
Rules - Use HTML
Via three simple forms you can complete control your webmasters page
(site where other webmasters can signup for a trade),
and the settings for new trades.
Your signup page is the file called signup.cgi in your AT directory.
Settings for new Trades
Via this form you can decide what kind of settings new trades get.
It are also these settings that are displayed by default in the
form when you add a new trade yourself via the 'Add Trades' tab.
It's not a bad idea to put in some strong rules here, to protect yourself
from cheaters. Meaning a max return of 50%, min click & trade prod of 100%
Do write down in the rules form that new trades are on a limit, and that it can
take a couple of hours before you make the rules more flexible.
Your Site's info
The data you fill in here will appear on your signup page,
so other webmasters know where to send hits to, and know how to contact you.
Rules - Use HTML
Whatever html you type in this field will appear on your signup page.
You can use any tag, and include pictures, frames, scripts, flash....
As long as it's valid code.
Trades :: Add Trades
New Trade
New Trade
When you want to add a new trade, it's easy to do it via this form.
You get full control over the settings, and you can even add trades
while the signup page is closed.
To prevent cheaters from signing up, close your signup page, and write down
in the rules field that everybody must contact you via icq for a trade.
Trades :: Edit Trades
Mass Edit
Extra Out URL
Mass Edit
When editing several trades at once, you should use this select box,
to select the setting you wish to edit. Fill in a new value in the textfield to the rigth of it.
Then select the trades you wish to edit by checking the checkboxes that are left
of all the trades.
Finally, at the bottom, hit the button
Extra Out URL
Once a surfer has visited all of your (active) trades,
he will be redirect to the Exout url the next time he's supposed
to see a trade. This way the script guarantees you only send out unique
hits, and you don't oversend / disrespect rules.
The cookie that logs all the sites a surfer has visited is reset once / day.
The trick is to make sure always have at least 10+ active trades, while 15+ is even better.
You will still get some Exout hits, but those hits are generated by hitbots, sitesuckers, etc.
For this reason it's never a good idea to fill in the URL of one of your (top) trades, to fee those
some more, since Exout traffic is in general of low quality.
Trades :: Delete Trades
Delete a Trade
Delete a Trade
Next to the RED system, you can also use this page to delete a trade.
The result is the same :)
Trades :: Import Trades
Import Trades
Import Trades
Back from AT 1, the import module helps you to easily import trades from other trade scripts.
This way switching scripts is a minutes's job, and you don't have to type-over 70 trades anymore.
Currently only TTT and AT 1 are supported, but support for more scripts is coming soon.
The data the import module needs is generated by the Trades Importer, which can be found
on the downloads page of arrowscripts.com:
http://www.arrowscripts.com/atl_dl.shtml
Follow the instructions step by step, for this module is rather dirty.
Trades :: New Trades
Trades that signed up via your signup.cgi page are listed here,
so you can easily see which trades are new, and which ones were already there.
The RED system is included, so you can easily edit the settings of new trades,
and delete the bad ones.
Info Center :: Arrow Trader News
In the news section you can read about the latest updates,
new tools that are available, interesting offers, competetions,
and all the other cools things that make Arrow Trader even better!
Keep a close eye on your news section.
To expand a news-post, click the title, and the rest of the message will appear.
This requires a browser that supports javascript
Info Center :: Arrow Trader Log
Arrow Trader Activity Log
The Arrow Trader Log shows you what's going on in the inside of your script.
The most important actions are logged here, like people logging in to your admin
(handy to pick up security-breaches), toplist failures (find out what's causing it)
ip daemon failures (again, find out the cause here), trade processing, etc. etc.
Whenever something isn't working, check the log first, and see if there's anything about it.
Info Center :: Auto Messenger
Auto Messenger - experimental
The Auto Messenger is a experimental module to keep the webmaster updated about
his site via email (and icq mail). This is only available for the Pro and eXtreme version.
The module requires Sendmail (http://www.sendmail.org/) to work. Sendmail is a standard
package for most Linux / BSD installations though.
At this moment it's only possible to be informed about new trades.
Plans are to add reporting possiblities for certain traffic marks,
toplist / ipdaemon errors, etc. as well.
Anti Cheat :: IP Logs
Count repetetive incoming IP's
Count repetetive outgoing IP's
Scan single IP
Count repetetive incoming IP's
This module will go through all your log files of the last 24 hours,
count all IPs of incoming hits, group them and output them based on
amount of occurences. This is a great way to detect cheaters that use
just one IP.
Extra information about that IP can be obtained by clicking the "Scan IP"
link next to the IP. This will active the IP Scanner, which I will discuss
below.
Count repetetive outgoing IP's
This module will go through all your log files of the last 24 hours,
count all IPs of outgoing hits (clicks), group them and output them based on
amount of occurences. This is a great way to detect cheaters that use
just one IP.
Extra information about that IP can be obtained by clicking the "Scan IP"
link next to the IP. This will active the IP Scanner, which I will discuss next.
Scan single IP
The IP Scanner can be accesses in 2 different ways.
First, you can type in a single IP to scan.
Second, you can click the "Scan IP" links that show up in the IP Counter modules.
The IP Scanner looks up all the referrers of that IP.
It also shows where this IP has been sent to.
Last, it also shows it it appeared as coming through a proxy
at the time of logging. (proxy in & proxy out will appear).
In a future update the result of the IP Scanner will also shows extra
information about the IP, like IP WHOIS information, to give you a better
idea what the IP is.
Before you block a IP that appears often (and perhaps is a proxy),
you really should find out more about it first, because you don't
want to end up blocking a AOL proxy for example (even though those IPS are on the safe list).
Anti Cheat :: IP Daemon
IP Daemon Settings
IP Daemon - htaccess Header
IP Daemon Safe List
Current .htaccess file
The IP Daemon is a tool that runs once every 20 minutes. It counts (seperately) all the
incoming and outgoing IPs, and blocks those that appear more than X amount of times.
IP Daemon Settings
The IP Daemon takes three arguments. The amount of times a IP may appear before it gets blocked,
(seperate for incoming and outgoing logs), and the path to where it should write the .htaccess file.
The path to your .htaccess file must be full, like
/usr/www/me/mysite.com/htdocs/.htaccess
Not just the directory!
It isn't neccesary that you upload a blank .htaccess file first, because when the IP daemon finds one,
it will delete it before writing the new one. Make sure the directory where the .htaccess file is in
has writing permissions, otherwise it won't work.
IP Daemon - htaccess Header
In many cases, you want to have some extra code in your .htaccess file besides the ip blocking code.
For example, code to redirect foreign surfers, or to protect your files from being hotlinked.
Since the IP Daemon deletes the current file everytime before writing a new one,
you must place your 'extra' code in the "htaccess header" field.
The IP Daemon will write this code away before writing the IP block code.
IP Daemon Safe List
There are some IPs that you don't even want to block, no matter how often they appear.
For example, AOL proxies. You put those IPs in the Safe List.
By default, all masks for AOL proxies are already on the list.
Notice that the Safe list consists of masks, so if you would put just
1
in the list, every IP that has a 1 in it won't be blocked. This way you can
put entire subnets on the Safe list without having to write down thousands of individual IPs.
Current .htaccess file
This field shows you the contents of the file that's in the "Path to .htaccess" field.
If everything works okay, this will show the contents of your .htaccess file.
If there's some error, like that it can't find the file, you should check all the settings.
Anti Cheat :: Black List
Add to Black List
Current Black List
Add to Black List
By adding a domain (like google.com) to your blacklist, you prevent these domains from signing up
on your signup page. If you wish, you can be informative and write down (with html code) what the reason
is why you blacklisted this domain. It's also not a bad idea to blacklist domains you deleted,
and write down why you deleted them. Like low quality of traffic, too many proxy / foreign hits, etc.
Whenever somebody tries to signup a blacklisted domain, he will get to see the reason you've filled in.
A entry will be written to the activity log when a blacklisted domain tries to signup.
Current Black List
This list simply shows the domains you've blacklisted and the reasons you've done so.
It will also allow you to remove domains from the blacklist.
Anti Cheat :: Proxies
This module is only for the Pro & eXtreme version of Arrow Trader,
yet it inactive right now even for those two versions, since there are new plans
to include the anonymous proxy modules in the Proxies module of the Per Trade tab.
The Anonymous proxy module shows the amount and % of anonymous proxies a trade sent you.
It also shows you the activity of this IP.
Top List :: Add Toplist
New Toplist
Current Toplists
Add Toplist
Toplists are great things to send out some extra quality hits to your trades.
Arrow Trader supports multiple toplists, all sorted on another type of data.
The toplists are updated every 20 minutes. If something goes wrong during the updating
(like bad file / directory permissions, the lack of enabled toplist trades / etc), this will
be logged in the activity log.
Like the .htaccess filepath for the IP Daemon, also the toplists require full file paths.
For example, a valid entry would look something like this (directory names + structure is server-specific of course)
source: /usr/www/me/mysite.com/htdocs/toplist_template.html
target: /usr/www/me/mysite.com/htdocs/toplist.html
The script will open toplist_template.html, parse this and then write the output to toplist.html
As an example of what the toplist template may look like, download this file
http://www.arrowscripts.com/at/lite/top100.html
Current Toplists
This list simply shows the current toplists that are in the database of the script.
Top List :: Edit Toplist
Edit Toplists
Edit Toplists
You can edit the source, target and order of the current toplists.
The actual change occurs the next time the toplist scripts runs,
which is 3 times per hour.
If you're editing source and/or target paths because something isn't working as it should,
look at the activity log as well, since the toplist script writes away a lot of errors there.
Top List :: Delete Toplist
Delete Toplists
Simply click the toplist entry you wish to delete, and it will be removed instantly.
This only deletes the toplist entry from your database though, it will not delete the
actual source + target files. You will have to do this manually.
Top List :: Help
Toplist Syntax
Help
To help you write a toplist template, refer to this page to learn how to write the correct syntax.
A top 100 template is available at the following URL
http://www.arrowscripts.com/at/pro/top100.html
Support :: Q & A
Q & A
Not so much a true Q & A round, but the answers to most of your basic questions should be
in this document. In fact, you're reading it right now.
A true Q & A section will appear 'maybe' later on, based on forum questions.
Support :: Forums
Forums
The support forums can be found at the URL below
http://www.arrowscripts.com/forums/index.php
Please use the forums to post your questions, suggestions and general feedback for Arrow Trader.
The forums have been updated, and now also have sections for general (biz) discussions,
gallery & trade requests / offers, cheater reports, and script-specific forums.
You're more than welcome to drop by and say what you want :)
Support :: Contact Info
Contact Info
Various ways of contacting me are listed here.
I ask everybody kindly to ask all of your questions on the forums though.
This way others can not only read your questions and possible answers,
but also help you with your problems, allowing faster replies.
Extra :: No Cookie
No Cookie Traffic
No Cookie Traffic
Arrow Trader (and just about every other trade script for that matter) use cookies to track hits between their in and out files.
When a surfer enters your site, the file in.cgi plants a cookie on him. In this cookie is the domain he was coming from,
and the trades he has already visited.
This way when he clicks links that go to out.cgi the script knows exactly which trade to credit for the click,
and where not to send him (trades he has already visited).
However, a small percentage of the surfers don't support cookies. It's almost impossible to track these users.
So Arrow Trader gives you several options to deal with these surfers.
Right now there are three option:
1. Block no cookie traffic (the surfers will see a blankpage when they click a link)
2. Treat like normal traffic: send to trades (not recommended, read below for more)
3. Send to URL noted below (send them to a sponsor for example. Make sure the sponsor doesn't use cookies though!)
4. (coming soon, set skim % to 100, so the surfer sees nothing but galleries)
Sending them to your trades (if you're trading) isn't a good idea, since trade scripts use cookies for tracking, as explained above.
So when you send 'm to trades, they will appear as hits in on the other site, but you don't get credit for the clicks they make
Result: your traffic 'looks' like it's of low quality (not clicking).
Sending to a sponsor is an option, as long as the sponsor uses server-variables to track the surfer between pages.
Otherwise you won't get credit for the signups!
Last option; block or change the skim level to 100%, so the nocookie sees nothing but galleries.
This way you get a good chance to turn him into a bookmarker who will keep visiting your site.
And as soon as he upgrades his browser, you can send him to some trades as well, and grow your site.
More information can be found here
http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=366922
Extra :: Click Patterns
Click Patterns
Click patterns allow you to override the skim percentage that's set in the URL
For example, you can send every first click to a gallery, or send all hits to trades once a surfer has seen 2 galleries.
The click patterns can (and sometimes must) work together with skimming percentages.
&s=80&c=1
send the first click to a gallery. All following clicks get a skim of 80%
&s=80&c=2
send the first and second click to a gallery. All following clicks get a skim of 80%
&s=80&c=3
First click to gallery, all clicks after that to trades. The &s=80 doesn't matter and can be left out.
&s=80&c=4
First and second click to gallery, all clicks after that to trades. Again, the &s=80 doesn't matter and can be left out.
&s=80&c=5
Skim level descends from 100 to 75 to 50, and remains at 50 for further clicks. The &s=80% again can be left out.
&s=80&c=6
Skim level descends from 100 to 90 to 80 to 70 to 60 to 50, and remains at 50 for further clicks. The &s=80% again can be left out.
&s=80&c=1&c=7
Skim level is read from flatfile.
This is interesting. The &s=80 doesnt' mean a thing. However, the &c=1 doesn't do anything either,
because even though at first the skim is set to 100%, a bit later on in the script click pattern 7 overwrites &c=1.
Extra :: Global database
Global database
The Global database is a very handy way to get new trades.
You can select trades based on traffic-ranges (submitted by AT itself, so the ranges are accurate!).
It also comes with extensive cheat reports to warn you about bad trades.
The Global database is still being developed, but will be available for all versions of Arrow Trader when it's done.
Extra :: Auto Pilot
Auto Pilot Rules
Auto Pilot
The Auto pilot is a great tool to secure and automate your site when you're
when you're too busy to check your site.
Additional Auto Pilot rules may be requested on the support forum by users of Arrow Trader Pro.
Extra :: Backups
Backups
A backup of all your data is created twice a day.
The backup files are located in the directory /cgi-bin/at/data/backup/
To restore a backup, remove your '/cgi-bin/at/data' diretory, select the backup you wish to use,
and extract the 'data' directory to your /cgi-bin/at/ directory.
To unpack a backup, type "gunzip name_of_backup.tar.gz"
followed by "tar -xvpf name_of_backup.tar"
Extra :: Credits
Credits
I'm very proud that the entire Arrow Trader project is a one-man operation.
Still, the script wouldn't have been quite as good as it is today without the input of several people.
So whenever I can, I thank Ausboy and Jose for their amazing support, ideas, and what not more.
The rest of the people who helped me in some way are on the credits page.
I'm aware that several names are missing there; fans that promote the script,
people who come up with tons of new ideas for the script, etc.
But they know I appreciate it :)
