Website stats

April 4, 2005 3:16 PM

I need a free, easy-to-install program to analyze server logs.

The info is there already, tucked away in the www_logs directory, but the host-provided analysis page ("analog reports") is too cluttered and ugly for my client. I tried installing awstats but it wanted me to mess with apache settings, etc, and all I really want is a script that'll go into the logs directory and make everything easy-to-read.

posted by Tlogmer to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Webalizer
posted by turbodog at 3:18 PM on April 4, 2005

With Webalizer you'd only need to mess with Apache settings if you weren't already logging what you need. IIRC, by default Apache 1.x doesn't log referrer, which is terribly useful.
posted by turbodog at 3:20 PM on April 4, 2005

Analog is probably the most popular. You should be able to tweak its config file (analog.cfg) to remove or reduce sections.
posted by hyperizer at 3:40 PM on April 4, 2005

Mac - Apache?

Webalizer
posted by leafwoman at 6:01 PM on April 4, 2005

AW Stats. Open source and requires Perl.

Here's a sample of output.
posted by furtive at 8:47 PM on April 4, 2005

I got burned -- bad -- by an AW Stats security hole this past weekend. It erased every website on my server. They've since patched it, I should have upgraded (I'd forgotten that I'd installed it some months ago), I had backups, etc., but, still, you won't catch me running AW Stats again.
posted by waldo at 9:29 PM on April 4, 2005

You'd do well not to run or allow awstats to run as a dynamic reporter (via the CGI). I'm fine with using it, but generate my static reports periodically via cron (and on Windows, nnCron Lite). I don't really see the need to have up-to-the-minute stats available, daily is just fine. No security risks that way, either.
posted by splice at 5:25 AM on April 5, 2005