[OpenLayers-Users] Mapping website visitors with OpenLayers?

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 08:49:24PM +0000, Alexandre Leroux wrote:
> Would using a thousand markers from a textfile with 
> OpenLayers.Layer.Text be advisable? 

Definitely not. Even without the IE issues that come with displaying
large numbers of markers, OpenLayers is only tested with up to 500
markers in Firefox. Performance beyond that level is simply degraded too
much.

> Is there another mean with 
> OpenLayers that would be more appropriate that I haven't discovered? 
> Would there be a way to generate "density maps" (the density of visitors 
> in that case; colored pixels based on the number of dots below each 
> pixel) directly with OpenLayers?

WMS. PostGIS can serve as a backend, MapServer can create the overlays,
and you can make it an untiled image so that you don't have to split it
up. I'm with David here: this is definitely the path you want to follow.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta