Insight Graph in NetWeb - How to prevent old images from being stored

[Mike Grigsby]

I just realized that Insight Graphs used in NetTalk Web are being stored in the web/images folder, but not being deleted. I suspect it's because a session is timing out and nothing gets done about them. Is there something I'm missing about how to clean up these images, or should I have the web server do it on a timer or something?

[Rene Simons]

Mike,
See this link.

http://www.nettalkcentral.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=36&topic=51.0

Rene

[Mike Grigsby]

Thank you Rene, but the files automatically have the $$$ generated in the images directory and they're not being deleted after being served. Maybe something isn't working right, based on Bruce's post.

[Rene Simons]

Mike,
It also occurred to me that in Bruce's message de folder name was temp.
Maybe it only works wheb de $$$-files  are in the temp folder??
Rene

[Bruce]

Hi Mike,

hmm - I've tested here using the BasicGraph example and it seems to be functioning ok.

One "hole" I can see though is if the web browser doesn't fetch the image. In that case it gets generated, but never served. If it's not served then of course it's not deleted.

There are 2 cases I can think of that might do this.
a) the user has "images" for their browser turned off or

b) there is a program, other than a browser, pinging your site. Gogglebot for example will probably visit your site from time to time, and I don't know if they'll bother to fetch the images. Also if someone points an RSS reader at your main page that also has the effect of fetching the text, but not necessarily the images.

So a couple questions for you to do -
a) do you get this effect in the example
b) do you get this effect when _you_ access your site via a browser, or are you just seeing images left behind by other users?

Cheers
Bruce

[Mike Grigsby]

Bruce, you may have hit it on the head. I do have a googlebot hitting this site just about every night, and I know that because I see it running the PDF reports when the little Acrobat icon comes up on the screen. One solution would be to try to exclude the bot from running in this directory by tweaking the robots.txt file.

[Bruce]

Another option might be to not generate the graph at all id the "browser" is a robot. I'll have to take a look at my logs to see if the bot can be distinguished from the others.

Cheers
Bruce

[Johan de Klerk]

Hi Mike,

I have the same problem with two of my sites and it is getting out of hand.
8000 hits a day.

I can't figure out what it is but would love a way to stop it or completely destroy it.

Bruce it would be great if you could figure out a way to detect this and stop it, if at all possible.
If you can detect it it would be great if you can add a checkbox to the template or something to stop RSS feeds and robots from accessing the site.

Regards

Johan de Klerk