Getting Statistical Reports of your Web Server Traffic (iServer - Verio Web Hosting, Inc

Getting Statistical Reports of Traffic at Your Web Site
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. The iServer 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 Log Files
Your iServer 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 four log files there:

  access_log
  agent_log
  error_log
  referer_log

Logged in those files 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 anlalyze it for you. Fortunately there are numerous programs that will do just that.

WebTrends
WebTrends is a web server log analyzing software package that produces attractive graphical reports of your web site traffic. It is easy to use since it runs on your own Windows95 PC. Simply configure it to download your Virtual server log files to your PC automatically and create predefined statistical reports. Those reports can remain on your PC, or be automatically uploaded back to your Virtual Server. Since Verio Web Hosting is a strategic partner of WebTrends Corporation, iServer resellers get a discount on WebTrends software.
- More information about WebTrends
UNIX Software
There are a number of web server log file analyzing programs available that can be installed directly on an iServer 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. The iServer Web Development Team has made several of these available on all Virtual Server host machines. They are preconfigured 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 Virtual Web Server Log Files
Your Virtual Web Server log files 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 and vnukelog2
These two utilities will empty your log files for you.
rotatelogs
This utility will help you rotate older log file using temporary files to store older data.
Cron Tutorial: Clearing Your Log Files
This tutorial will help you use cron to manage your log files.