Anonymous Viewers

From Doc

Table of contents 1 How could my albums have Unnamed Viewers? 2 Can you tell me who the Anonymous Viewers are? 3 How are Anonymous Visits counted? 4 Does it count me visiting my own albums?

An unnamed viewer in your visitor report is any visitor who views your site and/or albums that is not logged into Phanfare at the time of viewing.

However, this does not mean that the viewer is unknown to you. If the album is published to your site under a site password, set to private or viewable to friend/family only via Phanfare's optional registration-based security, you do know the viewer. You simply shared an album with them in a way that did not require them to be logged in to view it so there name does not appear in your actual reports (see below).

Note: With the recent Phanfare changes our CEO did post a note to the forums about unnamed visitors to your albums. It's available at: http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=2596

How could my albums have Unnamed Viewers?

Public albums: If you have albums that are public, visitors can go directly to that URL and view your albums and they do not have to be logged into Phanfare to do so. They just need to know your site's address. Visits that come directly to a public album and are not logged into Phanfare at the time (even if they are registered to Phanfare) will be listed as unnamed visits.

Site protected by site password: If you have set up your Phanfare site URL to be protected by a site password, viewers can go directly to that URL and enter the shared password to view. They don't enter any user-specific credentials so Phanfare doesn't have their name to publish to your visitor reports.

Private or Friend/Family only albums: It is possible to have anonymous visits to private or friend/family albums if:

• You have given out or posted an external link to that album. An external link is the direct link to the album obtainable from the web-browser application by going into any album and clicking share album-->get link to album. In the PC desktop application, you can right click any album and choose external link to obtain the link. It gives you a URL that you have to copy and then paste to send out or post. That URL has the word isolated in it and is an external way to view a closed album. It would not require the recipient to be logged in or have any credentials to view so it counts viewers of these links as anonymous.
• You use the Phanfare Application on Facebook to display recent albums on Facebook. The Facebook application uses the external links mentioned above.
• You are using Phanfare's email invitation tools to send invitations to view your site or albums (even to people connected to you). See above.

Can you tell me who the Anonymous Viewers are?

Phanfare does not report anything beyond the number of anonymous visitors. We are not able to tell you who the visitors are. They are counted by IP address so we don't know their identity (since they aren't logged in). Phanfare Support will not disclose the IP addresses of these visitors because an IP address is personally identifiable information, and if the viewer is registered for Phanfare and logged out, we want to protect the privacy of that individual.

How are Anonymous Visits counted?

Anonymous visitors are counted by IP Address once per day. So if someone looks at your public albums 5 times on one day, they will only count once. If they look at them again the next day, they will count again on the next day.

Does it count me visiting my own albums?

Visits to your own albums while currently logged into Phanfare, will not trigger a hit in the visitor reports. If logged out, you would count as a visit.