FRANKLIN, Readme File

2009-06-19, Marcel Eichner // Ephigenia

DESCRIPTION

Franklin is a very basic PHP5-script that collects data from various tests that you’ve configured from websites and services for a later display as charts in a report page. See a live demo.

REQUIREMENTS

• PHP 5.2 or later
• PHP Curl module (e.g. "php5-curl" package)

INSTALLATION

1. copy all files into an extra directory in your webspace
2. make the directory /app/data writable by the user running cron.php (see below)
3. cp /app/config/config.php.dist to /app/config/config.php and edit it
4. create a cron job that calls cron.php periodically (e.g. every 10mins)
   example: */10 * * * * user php5 -f /path/to/cron.php 2>&1 > /dev/null
5. open the Franklin html directory in your webbrowser to see the reports

TESTS

• name Optional name for a test, used also as chart title
• interval time interval between checks for the current test.
  f.e. +1 day, +30 minutes or shorter 2h

Facebook Group Fan Count

Detect the number of fans of a facebook group or page. This uses the open graph API and therefore the page must be public (not set to private and no age-restriction).

• groupId id or name of the facebook group or page, copy the id or name from the uri when you’re on the facbeook page

Feedburner Subscribers

Number of Feedburner-Feed subscribers. Make sure you enabled the Awareness API in the Feedburner configuration.

• uri Uri of the Feedburner-Feed, just copy the uri part of the URL

Feedburner Hits

Number of Hits on a Feedburner-Feed. Make sure you enabled the Awareness API in the Feedburner configuration.

• uri Uri of the Feedburner feed, you can simply get it from a feedburner URL

Google Results Count

Number of results on a google search query. You can use this to get the number of indexed pages or backlinks to your website that are known to google. You also can make up custom queries.

• search query to search
  f.e. site:www.horrorblog.org or link:www.horrorblog.org

Google SERP

This test can really help you to track the results of your SEO arrangements by telling you on which position (from 1 to 64) your website is on when you search for a specific term. It uses the Google Search API and can give you result also language and country specific by using the needed parameters.

• search the term you want to search for, usually a keyword you want to track
• language optional 2-letter language code you want to search in, i.e. de or en
• country optional additional country code you want to search in, this is automatically the same as language
• save optional save mode parameter that can be one of the 3 options specified in the google search api documentation: active, moderate and off, default is active

Lesercharts.de Position

Get the position on lesercharts.de depending on the url of the website.

• search Name of the entry on lesercharts.de, it’s usually the name in the first column

Twitter Followers Count

Detect the number of followers of a twitter user

• username name of the twitter user to check, not the real name of the user name is the uri part in the twitter profile url.
  f.e. www.twitter.com/horrorblogorg -> username would be horrorblogorg

Twitter Search API Results Count

This test uses the Twitter Search API to search the twitter site for a specific query (q). You can limit the results by date (since) or location (locale, geocode). The test will always record the number of results found.

• q Query search, parameter, check the Twitter Search API for examples
• since Since parameter to limit search results for since a date, a week or some days are recommended.
• geocode
• locale

Google Analytics API

This for now rather basic test exports pageViews or visits from google analytics data to franklin. Please see the config.php.dist file for an example.

Vimeo Video

This test uses the Vimeo Simple API to record various values for a single video.

• videoID Vimeo Video ID, get this from the embed code or link to the video
• property Property that should be recorded. stats_number_of_plays, stats_number_of_likes or stats_number_of_comments

Wikio Score

Wikio is a german website that gives scores to websites based on visitors, comments and activity. It scrapes the content of the detail page and records the numeric score. You just need to get the right uri part of the url.

• uri, for http://www.wikio.de/sources/www.horrorblog.org-aeK1 it would be www.horrorblog.org-aeK1

UPDATES/FEEDBACK

Franklin will be updated from time to time. Check the official Franklin Homepage and the github page for updates, new tests or contact to the developers.

Changelog

• 2010-10-25

  • Enforcing default theme "light" when no or broken theme is set

• 2010-10-23

  • Added Wikio Score test that records the score from wikio.de for a specific id

• 2010-10-19

  • Added Test using Vimeo Api that can record number of plays, likes and comments of a video

• 2010-10-17

  • added night and fancy_dark theme
  • removed grid color from themes cause it wasn’t used

• 2010-10-16

  • Devided Back and Frontend, set your webroot to /html/ directory! Also take care that the data directory change, copy your data files there!
  • Refactored project structure to have one public html directory
  • Refactored theming and added 3 themes!
  • Added Twitter Search API Results counter for recording number of twitter followers, mentions and other stuff.
  • Added Google Analytics Data API Test for recording pageViews and visits on a google analytics profile
  • Fixed Feedburner Tests by accessing data that is 2 days old instead of 1 day old which was just 0 all the time

• 2010-10-07

  • made sure a filename for the data files only contains valid characters

• 2010-08-21

  • Added possibility to add display configiration for tests
  • Some tests have number as their default display (rollover shows chart)
  • chart data is shiftet to minimum to see progress zoomed

• 2010-06-21

  • Fixed bug in Google SERP Test where name of test was set after constructing class and same file used, so test was ignoring interval

• 2010-06-20

  • Added google SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Test that can test on which position your site is on when you search for a term in a country and language, see the example on how to configure it.
  • Also added a very simple and static Log class that logs the results of all tests when in DEBUG_DEBUG or larger, modify your Franling::$debug if you want to surpress the messages.
  • Fixed bug where chart was not rendered when chart title inclueded a quotation mark, now escaped with urlencode

• 2010-06-16

  • Added Test that records the number of facebook group members
  • Fixed Twitterfollowers Regexp
  • Added some documentation for some of the most used Tests

• 2010-06-15

  • Fixed bug when no data available (empty charts)
  • Deleted old charting classes in lib/chart

• 2010-06-09

  • Updated all charts to use google chart API instead of own library
  • Added light and dark skin that can be changed by hand

• 2010-05-15

  • Fixed Google Results Count Test using Google Ajax REST API now
  • Fixed Alexa Site Rank test

• 2010-03-06

  • Added Test fro lesercharts.de
  • Fixed Alexa Traffic Rank for country
  • Cron now reports how many tests checked and runned

• 2009-10-17

  • Added Test for Twitter Follower Counting
  • Added Test for recording Alexa Traffic Rank values
  • Changed code style to Zend Framework coding-guidelines

• 2009-06-19

  • Fixed nothing, just set up the first release on sourceforge.net
  • also put up a small website for franlin on sourceforge