Difference between revisions of "Stats Manager"

Latest revision as of 12:54, 15 March 2011

Web Stats is a web server log file analysis program. It produces usage statistics from your website's server logs.

The statistical results are presented in both columnar and graphical format.

Yearly, monthly, daily and hourly usage statistics are presented, along with the ability to display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent (browser) and country.

Note that Web Stats keeps its statistics for 12 months. To keep your statistics for a longer period of time you have two options:

Rename the "stats" directory, which is located inside your "public" directory or move it to another location. Web Stats will create a new directory the next time it is run. When the new "stats" directory is created, it will only contain the statistics from the date it is created and the new reports will be generated from the available statistics.

Copy the contents of your "stats" directory to another location.

Web Stats uses Webalizer Version 2.01 server log analysis program.

Generating reports

Creating a report

When you log into Web Stats for the first time, you will be prompted to create a report using your log files. Click the "Update Report" button on the Web Stats application. This button is available in both the Basic and Advanced modes. To close the application, click the "X" button at the top-right corner of the Web Stats application window.

To switch between the Basic and Advanced modes at any time, Click the "User mode" drop-down menu and select "Advanced".

Updating the report

Your report can be automatically updated daily, weekly, or monthly. The report is automatically updated monthly unless you select another update frequency in the "Advanced" settings.

If you want to immediately update your report, click the “Update Report” button in the Web Stats application. This button is available in both the Basic and Advanced user modes.

Displaying the report

To display the report using the default report settings, select the "Display Report" button. The usage statistics for your domain will be displayed in a new browser window.

Creating a report using all log files available in log directory (Advanced mode)

Web Stats allows you to create a report that uses all available rotated and active server logs. In Advanced mode, underneath the "Create New Report" button, make sure that the box labeled "using all available logs" has been checked.

Every time you create a report using all log files, the old report will be saved by default. click the "Overwrite old report" check box to overwrite the old report. By creating a report using all log files, all files in the "stats" directory will be overwritten.

If the log files inside the "logs" directory are deleted or moved to another location, you will not be able to create a report using all log files. In this case, you must move the log files back to the "logs" directory before creating a report using all log files. The log files you upload or move to the "logs" directory should have the standard name format of activity log files.

The old report and associated files will be saved in a directory inside your public directory. The name format for this directory is a combination of the date and time you saved it with the word "stats" appended in front of it (i.e. stats_Jan18_2001_18_07_41). You can download the contents of this directory using File Manager or a FTP client. You can use these old reports for further reference.

If the activity log file is larger than 50K, by default it will be rotated when you run the Web Stats. To avoid log rotation, click the "Disable Log Rotation" check box .

Excluding IP addresses and URLs (Advanced mode)

The "Web Stats" function allows you to exclude IP addresses and/or URLs from your report. To exclude a URL, first make sure you are in Advanced mode. Enter the IP address or URL you want to exclude from the report in the "Ignored sites" textbox. After adding any IP addresses or URLs you wish to ignore, you should click either the "Update Report" or "Create New Report" button in order to save the information you have entered.

To remove an IP or URL from the "Ignore site" list, select or highlight the address in the textbox and delete it. Afterwards, you need to click the "Update Report" or "Create New Report" button for the deletion to take effect. To cancel the deletion, either exit the application, or switch back to Basic mode.

Configuring your report settings

Web Stats allows you to configure the report settings as desired by changing the top table keyword options.

To configure the report setting, click the "User mode" drop-down menu and select "Advanced". Set the "Report settings" as desired. Click the "Update Report" or "Create New Report" button to save the changes. To discard changes, either exit the application or switch back to Basic mode.

You must create a report using all log files available in log directory in order to apply changes made to the report settings.

The "Report settings" options are described in detail below:

Time periods

The yearly (index) report shows statistics for a 12-month period, and links for each month. The monthly report has detailed statistics for that month, with additional links to any URL's and referrers found.

Top Entry and Exit Pages

The Top Entry and Exit Pages give a rough estimate of what URL is used to enter your site, and what the last pages viewed are. Because of limitations in the HTTP protocol, log rotations, etc. this number should be considered a good "rough guess" of the actual numbers. It will give a good indication of the overall trend where users come into, and exit your site.

Entry - This option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top Entry Pages" table. To disable the table, use a value of zero (0).

Exit - This option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top Exit Pages" table. To disable the table, use a value of zero (0).

Agents

This option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top User Agents" table. To disable the table, use a value of zero (0).

Countries

This option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top Countries" table. To disable the table, use a value of zero (0).

Top Referrers and All Referrers

The Top Referrers option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top Referrers" table of sites that have referred people to your website. To disable the option, enter a value of zero (0).

The All Referrers option will display a report of all referrers to a site in a separate HTML page. By default, the All Referrers option will be off. The option can be enabled by changing its setting to "on."

It should be noted that in order for the All Referrers report to be generated, the number set in the Top Referrers option must be less than the website's actual number of referrers. If there are less than 5 referrers in total, the All Referrers report cannot be generated.

Sites

This option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top Sites" table. To disable the table, use a value of zero (0).

URLs

This option specifies the number of entries to display in the "Top URLs" table. To disable the table, use a value of zero (0).

Viewing reports

After your report is displayed, be sure to refresh the page via your browser's Reload (Netscape) or Refresh (IE) to ensure you are viewing the current report.

Description of report statistics

To view statistics for a specific month, click the month from the month column of the "Summary by month" table.

The various statistics that Web Stats generates are described below:

Hits

Any request made to the server which is logged is considered a "hit". The requests can be for any resource: HTML pages, graphic images, audio files, cgi scripts, etc. Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period.

Hits by response code

After a client makes a request to the server, the server returns a response code (status code). The Response code shows the result of the request. "Hits by response code" represents the total number of requests that received the same specified status code. Some common response codes are:

200 OK

302 Found

304 Not Modified

400 Bad Request

401 Unauthorized

403 Forbidden

404 Not found

500 Server error

Files

Some requests made to the server require that the server responds to the requesting client. This type of request is considered a "file" and the file total is incremented. The relationship between "hits" and "files" may be thought of as "incoming requests" and "outgoing responses".

Pages

Any HTML document, or process that generates an HTML document, is considered a page. This does not include graphic images, audio clips, etc. This number represents only the number of "pages" requested. What actually constitutes a "page" is determined by file extension.

Agents

A user agent is a web browser. The User Agent statistic details the type and version of the browsers used to view the domain.

Sites

Each request made to the server comes from a unique site, which can be referenced by a name or an IP address. The site's number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting period.

Visits

Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address, the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated. If the time difference is greater than a pre-configured "visit timeout" value (or has never made a request before), it is considered a "new visit". This total is incremented both for the site, and the IP address. The time-out value is 30 minutes.

KBytes

The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the amount of data, in KB that was sent out by the server during the specified reporting period. This value is generated directly from the log file, so it is up to the web server to produce accurate numbers in the logs. In general, this should be a fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic.