stats

[Binky]

It's taking me some time to fully understand the stats reports. Just for the heck of it I downloaded a program called FastStats 2 which, theoretically, allows me to download the stats and analyze them on my computer.

I downloaded the file "access" from my log_www directory, a 10 Mbyte file. It produced a report showing one hit. Can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. The info's in there somewhere but I gues FastStats, which seems like a really simple program to use, even for a dope like me, can't read it all.

Does anyone have any ideas that would help? Should I even bother?

[Justin]

I've been quite pleased with out stats - that is, once I got the hang of it.

Here's what I figure: Look at Pageviews as your actual hits. What it considers a hit is any file access at all. View one page with 10 images and you've got 11 hits.

Also, if anyone references an image from your site on theirs, that is a hit everytime it loads.

I like them a lot because it shows a LOT of detail that is confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it you will know which search engines give you the most hits, what files are more popular, who's stealing images from your server, and if you look hard enough, you can even see every visitors search string that they used to find you in a search engine. I use that a lot, it helps find your better keywords, etc.

That was a ramble. Anyway, personally I like the stats as they are, but if you want to use another program, it may want the logs to be in a particular format - every server is different. With Apache, you can set it up to log many different parameters.

Oh, now that I think about it, right now there is no client domain being logges - I wonder if the log files are half with and half without client domains? Could be that Fast stats can't read it because it's not consistent... just a guess.

Hope this helps.

Justin

[Terra]

It may not be compatible with our logging format... FQuest utilizes an ELF scheme... Your program may only be able to cope with CLF or DLF logs...
CLF == common log format
DLF == combined log format
ELF == extended log format

ELF is not supported by many PC based log analyzers, this format is primarly for Server log crunchers like http-analyze... Heck, even WebTrends $$$$$ analyzers can't even handle it, last I checked (*sigh*)

ELF shaves about 15%-20% off the processing time each night, a lot when you consider that FQuest handles and processes over 3 Gigs of logs every night...

As far as IP's being reverse resolved, that has been suspended until the upgrades are complete... I will be offloading the STATS and RARP processing to another server, as the bulk of logs are becoming more than what one machine can handle...

There are various other threads that go deeper into the details of how we process logs, so I'll stop rambling now...

--
Terra
--STATS and I have a love/hate relationship--
FutureQuest