If you look at the code the information sent is strictly the version of WPAA (WordPress-Amazon-Associated) installed and the website url as that is a unique id for tracking if it gets deactivated/upgraded.
WordPress is great at telling plugin authors how many downloads there has been and percentage of sites using each version however it doesn’t give details on actual number of sites using the plugin so I built that capability into the plugin, hence the activation/deactivation functions.
why do you need to know information about the number of activations?
why do you need to know the site url?
what do you do, or are you planning to do with that information?
why is this function not documented in the readme?
I don’t know of any other plugins in the repository which harvest site URLS like this unless they have a reason, such as use of an API on the remote site.
Hi I wanted to know actual stats on how many sites are using the plugin, no other purpose. The website url is the unique identifier for making it so there is no repeated counts when users update to a new version of the plugin.
If you have any reservations about using the plugin then please do not use it however upon reviewing the logic of the methods you will see that all it sends is as stated website url + plugin version.
“If you look at the code the information sent is strictly the version of WPAA (WordPress-Amazon-Associated) installed and the website url as that is a unique id for tracking if it gets deactivated/upgraded.”
Plugins should never track like this.
The plugin is removed until that is resolved and the version bumped.
Mark:
Where is this outlined? WordPress has no support for tracking the actual number of installed plugins or active versions (beyond the pie chart that is known to be misleading as from day to day versions shown will not be inclusive. Using the blog url you are able to know the active number of sites currently using the plugin as well as which versions of the plugin need to be supported including upgrade logic.
Kindly please specify where this is outlined. As previously stated my intentions are to know actual figures on usage of the plugin for support and enhancements. If there is another unique identifier that can be used please specify as if it is not unique then there is no way to know actual statistics on plugin usage.
Mark:
The plugin was updated to a new version and uses a passive statistical tracking of version installations. Please review and re-instate the plugin in the directory.
