Home Contact Us Search

[ Order a Server ] [ Server Support ]


[ Getting Started ] [ Server Help ] [ Add on Help ] [ Solution ] [ Trouble Shooting ]

PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS VERY OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS

Getting Statistical Reports of Your Web Site Traffic

No doubt, you are at least curious about the traffic that your web site attracts. More likely, your business depends on obtaining detailed information about your web site traffic, and adapting to that information. Our Virtual Server system allows you to easily obtain all the statistical information you need to know about usage of your web site.

Virtual Web Server Logfiles

Your Virtual Server logs all the traffic at your Web site to log files located on your server. Those log files are located in the ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/logs directory on your Virtual Server. There are either two or four log files there depending on how web server is configured. Newer Virtual Servers are configured by default to log in the Combined Log Format. All information is logged to these two log files:
access_log
error_log
Older Virtual Servers are configured by default to log in the Common Log Format. All information is logged to these four log files:
access_log
agent_log
error_log
referer_log
If you wish to change your web server log format, see Changing the Web Server Log Format. Logged in the files above is the volume of activity at each page on your web site, the type of browser used to access each page, any errors that users may have experienced downloading pages from your site, and where users were referred from when they accessed pages at your site.

Log File Analysis Programs

The actual data logged in the web server log files is arcane, to say the least. To make any sense of it, you need a log file analysis program to process and analyze it for you. Fortunately there are numerous programs that will do just that.

UNIX Software
There are a number of web server log file analyzing programs available that can be installed directly on a Virtual Server. Most of these programs will analyze your web server log files in-place and then create HTML, text, or even e-mail reports of your Virtual web server traffic. Our Web Development Team has made several of these available on all Virtual Server host machines. They are pre-configured for easy installation, and best of all, they are completely free of charge.

Scheduling Analysis Programs to Run Regularly

You will probably want your web server statistical reports to be created regularly. For example, you may want a regular weekly report of activity at your site, or perhaps an e-mail report delivered daily. The Unix Cron utility can be used to automatically run such scheduled processes.

Managing Your Web Server Log Files

The web server log files on your Virtual Server are augmented each time your web site is accessed. If you are not regularly managing these log files they can grow to be quite large and eventually consume all your available disk space. There are several utilities provided to manage your web server log files.

vnukelog
This utility will clear your web server log files for you.

rotatelogs
This utility will help you rotate older log files using temporary files to store older data.

PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS