I would like to embed a flag counter to my profile. Is this possible? How?

Question

I wanted to see if I could do it just for fun. I have html code that works if you wanted to embed it into a website, but I can't figure out how to do it on wikitree, or if you can at all.

Answer 1

Noah, I'm not sure what you mean by "flag counter", but perhaps I can answer some of your questions.

WikiTree forces us to use something called "wiki code" on the editing page, then WikiTree's software converts that to html code when the page is assembled for dissemination.  Some parts of wiki code look a lot like html, but it is absolutely *not* html and, even if the tags look similar, they do not work exactly the same.

If you're looking for the number of hits on your profile page, that is shown there.  It's on the left side at the bottom of the data section, just before the biography starts.

If you want to put a flag graphic on your profile, you can either upload one of your own or use one of the existing ones.  You can check the help index and look for Flags to find them.

If that doesn't help, please try to clarify exactly what you're looking for so that I or someone else can give you a better answer.

Comments

I was talking about flag counters from a website like this one http://s04.flagcounter.com/index.html

 

You can specify what you would like it to be like and it will provide you with source code that you can use.

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So you are trying to figure out where the people who read your profile come from?

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Yes, I thought it would be interesting to see.

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That does look like an interesting concept in counters, but there are several reasons why it could not be done here.

The main reason is that WikiTree does not permit embedding of external websites - we can't embed Utube videos, for example.

For what it's worth, I would not ever even consider using something like that because I don't know anything about that website or what interest they might have in collecting data about people who visit one of my websites.  In this era of extreme need to guard our privacy on the internet, this looks like a prime way to open the door to unwanted data collection for unknown - and unknowable - purposes.

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So there isn't a way to do this? If there isn't it would be cool if wikitree made something that we could insert a counter for either the entire world, or a specific country like the US which would show the flags of different states.

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You could try putting the code on the edit page of your profile and see if it works.  Some html does actually work, although we're urged to avoid using html on profiles.  As you may gather from what I said above, it is definitely not something I would ever recommend doing, even if it turns out to work.

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Where would it be pulling the country information from? If you are going to be accessing users’ e-mail addresses to guess at country information then Wikitree might need to consider another adaptation to the privacy policy to ensure that users can consent.

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It wouldn't have any way of knowing the email addresses of website visitors - it would have to be done by IP address, and that would not be a guess - specific blocks of IP addresses are assigned to specific geographic areas, so it's easy enough to look up.  The IP address is one of the server variables that is automatically passed on every internet transmission, but it would be passed between the user's ISP and the WikiTree server ... these guys would have to somehow insert themselves in there to grab it!

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Which takes us back to your earlier question about who would be doing the grabbing and what control Wikitree would have over any third parties involved in the process. Anyway, aside from the technical and security issues it also strikes me as a fairly pointless exercise from a genealogical viewpoint. It doesn’t give any useful information about the person reading the profile other than where their computer is located at the time.

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It sounds fun. If there is more interest, we might add this as a suggestion for our tech folks to look at it.  But to be frank, it wouldn't be very high up on the list at the moment, with all the GDPR changes we're going through.  For now, please don't add whatever code you found on the site you linked to though.  As Gaile mentioned, this is not something we would recommend.

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I just thought it would be something interesting (although quite useless) to see. I would still love to see something like this on wikitree. I have always had an interest in looking at maps and useless statistics of random things.

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If you just wanted numbers, then below the coloured box with the profile manager's name in it etc and above the badges (so it is squeezed in) is a sentence like 'This page has been accessed 10,002 times.'