I need some help with logging clicks or page views for a specific situation (besides the built in Statistics and access logs of Drupal).

My situation is that we would like to build online courses. I have built out a template using the book module that works great for laying out course content. On certain pages, there are additional "activities" that a participant is expected to view. These activities are simply other nodes that are referenced by CCK node reference.

As a new Drupal user, I love the ability to create queries using Views. BUT...I haven't really enjoyed all of the extra HTML markup that gets included. On a few Drupal sites (which may or may not be using Views), their HTML code is really cut down.

Essentially, I'm hoping to cut out unnecessary class names like:

<div class="view view-featured-news view-id-featured_news view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-4 views-processed">

I understand that this is generated in the Views tpl files, but I don't know enough php to alter the something like:

<?php print $field->class; ?>

Especially since that's in a "foreach" statement.

I know that I can copy these files into my theme folder and make the adjustments - but is that the best method?

Thanks a ton for all of your help!

avr