A simple description of a site I designed and built for a client. Old-school perl scripts to handle logging millions of web hits per day.

1. Project Title: LinkPopularityCheck.com
Period: March 2001 through June 2001. Continuing support.
Client: FirstPlace Software, Inc.
Complexity: 16 Perl scripts, 500 lines.
8 database tables, 100 Meg of data.
Technology: Apache Web Server
Perl 5.0
MySQL database server
Summary: As an added service for the Webposition application, FirstPlace
Software provides a site where a user can compare the
“popularity” of their site (a count of hits when searching for their
site on a search engine, not including links within the original
site) against other websites.
The application has two major functions. In the first, the
comparisons are done on the fly by querying the search engines in
parallel for each for each of the searches and extracting the
pertinent data from the results and combining the results into an
output table. In the second function, the user may sign up for a
periodic email that will automatically run the search and report
the results via email. The primary purpose of the email is
marketing Webposition products.
The system is not complex, but it processes hundreds of
thousands of searches a month, sending tens of thousands of
emails.
Code Gurus was the sole developer for the application and
support tools. Graphical design was performed by FirstPlace’s
designers.
URLs: http://www.webposition.com/
Reference: Brent Winters
407-240-5114
brent@firstplacesoftware.com

2. Figure 1 - Main Page. Enter Sites.

3. Figure 2 - Results Output