Statistics

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We have 2 statistics packages that you can avail of from your account:

1. AWStats

2. Webalizer

AWStats

AWStats is a 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

Webalizer

The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser.

It is one of the most popular statistics packages 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/.

Setup and Usage

Enabling stats for you site

1. Log into your control panel on https://cp.host.ie

2. From the quick access panel, choose the web options icon

3. Scroll down until you see the Webalizer and AWStats options.

4. There will be a button beside each stats package. To enable the package for your account, all you need to do is turn on the respective button.

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5. Note also the magnifine glass beside each of the packages - clicking on this will open up your statistics page, allowing you to check your details from within the control panel

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Analysis of AWStats Output

A full log analysis enables AWStats to show you the following information:

  • Number of visits, and number of unique visitors,
  • Visits duration and last visits,
  • Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits,
  • Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week),
  • Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection),
  • Most viewed, entry and exit pages,
  • Files type,
  • Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate),
  • OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected),
  • Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version (Web, Wap, Media browsers: 97 browsers, more than 450 if using browsers_phone.pm library file),
  • Visits of robots (319 robots detected),
  • Worms attacks (5 worm's families),
  • Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc...),
  • HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, ...),
  • Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose,
  • Number of times your site is "added to favourites bookmarks".
  • Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
  • Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page).

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Analysis of Webalizer Output

The Webalizer produces several reports (html) and graphics for each month processed. In addition, a summary page is generated for the current and previous months (up to 12), a history file is created and if incremental mode is used, the current month's processed data.

The exact location and names of these files can be changed using configuration files and command line options. The files produced, (default names) are:

index.html - Main summary page (extension may be changed)

usage.png - Yearly graph displayed on the main index page

usage_YYYYMM.html - Monthly summary page (extension may be changed)

usage_YYYYMM.png - Monthly usage graph for specified month/year

daily_usage_YYYYMM.png - Daily usage graph for specified month/year

hourly_usage_YYYYMM.png - Hourly usage graph for specified month/year

site_YYYYMM.html - All sites listing (if enabled)

url_YYYYMM.html - All urls listing (if enabled)

ref_YYYYMM.html - All referrers listing (if enabled)

agent_YYYYMM.html - All user agents listing (if enabled)

search_YYYYMM.html - All search strings listing (if enabled)

webalizer.hist - Previous month history (may be changed)

webalizer.current - Incremental Data (may be changed)

site_YYYYMM.tab - tab delimited sites file

url_YYYYMM.tab - tab delimited urls file

ref_YYYYMM.tab - tab delimited referrers file

agent_YYYYMM.tab - tab delimited user agents file

user_YYYYMM.tab - tab delimited usernames file

search_YYYYMM.tab - tab delimited search string file

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

Hits

Any request made to the server which is logged, is considered a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything... 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.

Files

Some requests made to the server, require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.

Pages

Pages are, well, pages! Generally, any HTML document, or anything that generates an HTML document, would be considered a page. This does not include the other stuff that goes into a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc... This number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, and does not include the other 'stuff' that is in the page. What actually constitutes a 'page' can vary from server to server. The default action is to treat anything with the extension '.htm', '.html' or '.cgi' as a page. A lot of sites will probably define other extensions, such as '.phtml', '.php3' and '.pl' as pages as well. Some people consider this number as the number of 'pure' hits... I'm not sure if I totally agree with that viewpoint. Some other programs (and people :) refer to this as 'Pageviews'.

Sites

Each request made to the server comes from a unique 'site', which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This DOES NOT mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs and the HTTP protocol (however, this number might be about as close as you will get).

Visits

Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated (if any). 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', and this total is incremented (both for the site, and the IP address). The default timeout value is 30 minutes (can be changed), so if a user visits your site at 1:00 in the afternoon, and then returns at 3:00, two visits would be registered. Note: in the 'Top Sites' table, the visits total should be discounted on 'Grouped' records, and thought of as the "Minimum number of visits" that came from that grouping instead. Note: Visits only occur on PageType requests, that is, for any request whose URL is one of the 'page' types defined with the PageType option. Due to the limitation of the HTTP protocol, log rotations and other factors, this number should not be taken as absolutely accurate, rather, it should be considered a pretty close "guess".

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 (some web servers do stupid things when it comes to reporting the number of bytes). In general, this should be a fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server had, regardless of the web servers reporting quirks.

Note: A kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 :)

Top Entry and Exit Pages

The Top Entry and Exit tables give a rough estimate of what URL's are 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, however will give a good indication of the overall trend in where users come into, and exit, your site.

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