CFQuickDocs Stats: Top 50 Queries
3 weeks ago I added logging to CFQuickDocs so that I could see what people are looking for. The results are interesting, so I thought I'd publish them here.
The top two tags are cffile and cfloop. This makes sense, because both of these have various syntax rules based on how you need to use it. But I found it interesting that #3 was cfquery. Do that many people not know how to use cfquery? Here are the full stats, for your viewing pleasure:
From 2006-10-10 to 2006-10-31 Queries: 8393 Tag queries: 3887 Func queries: 4506 Unique tag queries: 127 Unique func queries: 250
| Top 50 Tags | Top 50 Functions | |||
| 1 | 325 | cffile | 128 | dateformat |
| 2 | 238 | cfloop | 81 | dateadd |
| 3 | 156 | cfquery | 76 | replace |
| 4 | 154 | cfdirectory | 74 | timeformat |
| 5 | 94 | cfhttp | 73 | isvalid |
| 6 | 91 | cfqueryparam | 65 | listappend |
| 7 | 89 | cfoutput | 65 | listfind |
| 8 | 78 | cfchart | 63 | numberformat |
| 9 | 72 | cfdocument | 62 | find |
| 10 | 68 | cffile-upload | 61 | valuelist |
| 11 | 68 | cfstoredproc | 57 | createobject |
| 12 | 66 | cfinput | 53 | findnocase |
| 13 | 61 | cfcontent | 52 | querysetcell |
| 14 | 57 | cffile-write | 50 | expandpath |
| 15 | 56 | cfloop-list | 48 | datecompare |
| 16 | 55 | cffunction | 48 | listgetat |
| 17 | 55 | cfxml | 44 | datediff |
| 18 | 54 | cfmail | 44 | xmlsearch |
| 19 | 54 | cfsetting | 43 | queryaddcolumn |
| 20 | 48 | cfinvoke | 42 | rereplace |
| 21 | 48 | cfparam | 41 | left |
| 22 | 47 | cfcatch | 41 | mid |
| 23 | 47 | cfloop-query | 41 | removechars |
| 24 | 46 | cfcookie | 40 | arrayappend |
| 25 | 41 | cfselect | 40 | hash |
| 26 | 40 | cfif | 40 | refind |
| 27 | 40 | cfsavecontent | 39 | evaluate |
| 28 | 39 | cfchartseries | 39 | listtoarray |
| 29 | 37 | cfapplication | 39 | querynew |
| 30 | 37 | cfdump | 38 | getdirectoryfrompath |
| 31 | 37 | cftable | 37 | arraynew |
| 32 | 36 | cfbreak | 37 | createdate |
| 33 | 36 | cfmodule | 37 | listcontains |
| 34 | 35 | cferror | 37 | structdelete |
| 35 | 34 | cfloop-COM | 36 | datepart |
| 36 | 33 | cfcomponent | 36 | listdeleteat |
| 37 | 33 | cffile-read | 36 | quotedvaluelist |
| 38 | 33 | cfswitch | 36 | structkeylist |
| 39 | 33 | cfwddx | 36 | xmlparse |
| 40 | 32 | cfform | 35 | urlencodedformat |
| 41 | 31 | cflogin | 34 | fileexists |
| 42 | 31 | cfthrow | 34 | structappend |
| 43 | 30 | cflocation | 33 | structkeyexists |
| 44 | 29 | cfinclude | 33 | xmlformat |
| 45 | 29 | cfprocparam | 32 | htmlcodeformat |
| 46 | 28 | cftimer | 32 | htmleditformat |
| 47 | 28 | cftransaction | 31 | preservesinglequotes |
| 48 | 27 | cfcase | 30 | replacelist |
| 49 | 27 | cfloop-index | 29 | len |
| 50 | 27 | cftry | 28 | listfindnocase |
Jake Munson
38 Yrs old
I far prefer using cfquickdocs vs livedocs. Livedocs is just way way way too slow most of the time. Not a big deal, I just go directly to your site. However many times I am searching google for something, and the livedocs comes up because of text in the docs, plus comments at the end. So I click on it to read the text, wait 2 minutes and finally see the page.
Your site doesn't seem to come up in google for those searches.
As such when I made the custom CF search http://www.cfhunt.com I add your site to the index, but I don't think your site will come up. I think you could easily get each tag/function listed on google if you exposed one page with shortcut links to them all. I know you already have code done for shortcut links, so this should be easy. This way you show up in the index and the cfhunt site will be able to direct people to your site.
shortcut example:
http://www.cfquickdocs.com/?getDoc=cfchart
Your pages in google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&saf...
Ben, I too was surprised. Especially when you notice that cfif is searched for more than cfapplication, cferror, and cfcomponent (all three of which I might look up on occasion). I think it goes to show that there are lot of new people in the CF community, still learning.
I created a separate page that lists all the tags and functions as links. For future reference, this page is linked on CFQuickDocs, here it is for convenience:
http://cfquickdocs.com/completeList.cfm
Right next to the name of the tag or the function could you show the group ?
People looking for "Coldfusion String functions" may not find your pages through Google.
People looking for something specific like 'Coldfusion Lcase syntax" may land on your page but only because they already know what they are looking for.
One more small suggestion, Google Analytics is a powerful tool, you may want to look into it and not only track how people are getting to your pages but where they are coming from.
As you said the list shows a big presence of new programmers, having the statistics by location could help the local CFUG to be more proactive and reach into their communities and focus more on teaching the basics.
Just a few ideas, since they are free doesn't hurt to have them out there.
good luck and keep up with the great work.
Fernando
I don't have any JS detection in CFQuickDocs. The entire site is heavy JavaScript, and frankly I don't really care if people can't use it without JS enabled. As far as Google, I'd heard that Google does have a spider that uses JavaScript. Don't know if that's true or not. But I appreciate your comments, even if I don't care to go to all the work to make stuff work without JS. :(