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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:
- Error log - stores data about errors generated by the
server (e.g. Page Not Found error) or by your CGI scripts;
- 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.
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:
- Select domain Info in the Domain Settings menu.
- Click the Edit icon next to the Web
Service field.
- 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:
- Select Quick access in the Account menu
and click the Web Options icon.
- 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:
- Select Domain Info in the Domain Settings
menu.
- Click the Edit icon next to Web Service.
- On the page that shows, 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.
AWStats
AWStats is a free web
analytics tool, which can available both in Unix and Windows
hosted accounts. It generates web, ftp or mail server
statistics into graphical web pages.
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, can be 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/. | 
