Webstats Alternatives [Archive] - PowWeb Community Forums

NMS

10-4-03, 03:29 PM

There are some users which are having problems with their webstats program (webalizer).

Read the latest Announcement. (http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26794)

At the moment Powweb is working out a better webstats solution. For those who wish to have a proper stats program running without problems, I suggest the following:

Webalizer:
http://help.powweb.com/tutorials/webstat/setup.php

Awstats Tutorial is Here (http://support.powweb.com/index.php?category=Site%20Statistics&topic_id=1)

Another simple system is (ideal to monitor subdirectories or secondary domain traffic):
http://webstats.nmsdesigns.com/

If you need help to install any of the following queries, feel free to ask in the forums.

Good Luck!

NMS

11-13-03, 05:51 AM

Suggestion by B&T:

Here is another alternative to the webstats problems that does not involve any more analysis scripts (webalizer, awstats, etc.).
I see 2 problems with those server-based script approaches.

1) The are hard to get working and keep working.
2) They do not save the raw data so when/if there are problems you are hosed if you want to go back more than 8 days (the 8 days of logs in your logs directory).

So here is another alternative.

You have cron kick off a script each night (at 1:00 am after the log processing has run) that copies the access_log.1 file to a file in another directory that is dated (I use 11_05.log for example). Then you have ALL the logs for history anaylsis.

Then, as a part of my normal daily site backup those files are downloaded to my PC.

Now you can use a PC based log analyzer and you have all your log files (by date) on your PC. You can analyze as much as you want.

BUT . . . this still depends on Powweb to create the access_log.1 file each night correctly. In analyzing my logs this is not always the case. But when they double up or skip (as they sometimes do) at least you have the raw files and can just delete one or fix it if you want to have accurate stats (one more advantage of keeping the raw files).

The PHP script I use to make new "date named" copies (compressed to save space) of the log files each night is as follows (simple . . . only 6 lines):

<?php
putenv('TZ=HST10HDT'); // move clock back 2 hours
$day = (date("m_d"));
$filename1="/www/u/user/logs/access_log.1";
$filename2="/www/u/user/$day.log";
copy ($filename1,$filename2);
system( "gzip $filename2" );
?>

Why did I move the clock back 2 hours? The log file contains yesterday's data. So I moved the clock back two hours so the date() function would give yesterday's date. That way the date in the file name to matches the log data.

And the PC program I use to analyze the logs is:

http://www.weblogexpert.com/

the free version does all I need, and more than webstats did. You can pay for one that does even more.