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Depending on your hosting plan, your account may include
different tools to track and report your website statistics. This
document discusses:
Understanding Website Statistics
Information about the operation of your site is critical for
decision-making. To obtain this information, you need to analyze
statistical data that is written to log files in your home
directory on the server:
- Transfer log - stores combined data about every visit to
your site, including:
- Remote host IP (i.e. visitor's IP);
- Time of request (i.e. when visitor requested the page);
- First line of request;
- Error generated by request, if any;
- Size of message sent in response to the request;
- Referrer (i.e. from which page visitor was directed);
- Agent ID (i.e. type of browser or another agent and related
information, such as user's OS, etc.) ;
- Referrer log - stores the list of URLs from which
visitors are referred to your site; and
- Agent log - stores data about agents used to enter the
site -- such as browsers or any other Internet-based software --
and all related data.
- Error log - stores data about errors generated by the
server (e.g. Page Not Found error) or by your CGI scripts;
These are called raw logs which processed to obtain
readable information, usually in the form of tables and charts. So,
to start with your website statistics, check if stats logging is
enabled.
Enabling Stats Logging
To enable or disable writing to log files:
- Click the Web Options icon on your control panel home
page
- Select the Domain name you need
- On the page that shows, scroll down to the Settings
section and click the ON/OFF icon next to the log
files.
Viewing Raw Logs
Raw logs are difficult to read, but luckily you don't need to do
this. However, if you need to take a look at the logfile
records:
- Click the Web Options icon on your control panel home
page.
- Choose the necessary domain
- Scroll down to Log files and click the View icon next to
it.
- List of log files shows.
- Click the necessary file and all its records will show.
Note: Entering end in the Line Number field
will show a list of records from the tail of a logfile.
Log Analyzers
Log analyzers parse raw logs to produce visual reports in HTML
format for viewing through a browser.
To enable these analyzers and view statistics reports for your
sites:
- Click the Stats icon to go to the Statistics
page.
- Enable/disable the statistics package you want.
- Click the Apply link on the right of this domain.
- Click the View icon to go to the page of the statistics
report.
This page is renewed once every 24 hours. Please wait till the next
morning to see the report to show up. The report must contain
statistics since the raw logs were enabled.
Urchin
Urchin
is a commercial (not free) web analytics software, which can be
available both for Unix and Windows hosted accounts.
Urchin is used on millions of sites worldwide, including over
20% of the Fortune 500.
Urchin will help you:
* Track overall site traffic, including unique visitors,
referrals, domains, and search engines
* Analyze and improve the quality and loyalty of your site's
traffic
* Make more money by maximizing the effectiveness of your
search engine optimization and cost-per-click advertising
Urchin software analyzes your website log files and delivers
fast, interactive reports and graphics on every aspect of your
website's traffic and visitors.
Urchin is easy to install and allows you to view reports in
seven languages, with clear explanations of what you are viewing on
each report.
Urchin is an essential tool for web designers, marketing
professionals, webmasters, and anyone interested in the success of
their web business. Urchin is modular, so you can buy the licenses
that best fit your needs.
AWStats
AWStats is
a free web analytics tool, which can be available both in Unix and
Windows hosted accounts. It generates web, ftp or mail server
statistics into graphical web pages. AWStats statistics for your
domain is available in your browser at
http://<your_domain>/cgi-bin/awstats.pl
AWStats has a separate configuration file for each serviced
domain. You can find this file in your home directory
<DOMAIN_NAME>/cgi-bin/awstats.<DOMAIN_NAME>.conf.
To protect your AWStats reports from unauthorized access, you
need to configure access rules for
<DOMAIN_NAME>/cgi-bin/awstats.pl in the
.htaccess file as suggested in AWStats Security Tips.
Webalizer
Webalizer is one of the most
popular free statistics packages. It is available only for Linux
hosted accounts. Once you have Webalizer enabled, it starts
collecting your web statistics. You can see it in your browser by
going to http://<your_domain>/webalizer/.
ModLogAn
ModLogAn
is another free statistics package included into H-Sphere
installation. It is available only for Linux hosted accounts. You
can see Modlogan statistics for your domain in your browser at
http://<your_domain>/modlogan/.
Protecting Statistics
If it's provided by your plan, in H-Sphere 3.0 and up you can
protect statistics of your site with password. H-Sphere will
automatically use the password of your main FTP user for this
purpose. After you turn such protection on occasional visitors of
your site won't be able to view its statistics simply by using such
links as your.site.url/webalizer/index.html.
To enable this protection:
- Make sure to enable either Webalizer,
Modlogan or Awstats, or all of these before protecting.
- On the Quick Access page click Stats in the
Tools section.
- Click Off in the Web Statistics Password
Protection column to turn it On for a domain:
Now when clicking  to view stats by one of the three analyzers
enter to the prompt your main FTP login
and password.
Note: if one of the three analyzers being disabled at the
moment you turned the protection on was enabled afterwards and you
want to protect it as well, turn for that the Web Statistics
Password Protection option Off and then On
again.
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