Setting up the way how your Web
Server logs visits is crucial to track visits to your web site.
Surfstats Web Site Traffic Analyzer (Log Analyzer) and
SurfstatsLive require web server log files to analyze and track
visits to your web site.
Apache Server Setup
Please refer to
http://httpd.apache.org/
for detailed documentation on the Apache web server.
For Apache log files specify the Log file date format on the Log
Format tab by editing the site profile.
Do not use the Multi File Logs as
combined log files are easier to handle. You can configure
Apache to generate combined log files by editing the "httpd.conf"
file in the /Apache/conf/ directory and change entries as
follows:
- Specify the log file format
with the LogFormat directive, example: LogFormat "%h %l %u
%t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""
- Specify that you want a
combined log file stored and the location, for example:
CustomLog logs/combined.log combined.
Some web site hosts supply their
clients with Multi File (separated) log files. With this
configuration the web server logs to three separate files,
instead of one combined file:
- access log - this contains the date/time and file accessed
- referrer log - this contains the referrer information
- agent log - this contains the browser or "agent" information.
In SurfStats you need to set up
the profile to handle separate log files as follows. Only select
the access log when specifying this log file type in Surfstats.
The other log files will be added automatically. You should also
enable the Multi File Logs option on the site profile.
Please note that Multi File logs
are outdated and will not be supported by newer versions of
Surfstats anymore.
IIS Server Setup
Please refer to Microsoft's web
site for detailed documentation on the Microsoft IIS web server.
We suggest using the W3C Extended
Log File Format as it is the only IIS5/6 format that logs
Browser/Platform and Referrer info on IIS (Internet Information
Server). SurfStats also supports the other available IIS types.
To set up logging in IIS do the following:
Click on Start - Programs -
Administrative Tools - Internet Service Manager - select
your server and web site- right click on it and select
Properties - Choose Active log format (W3C Extended Log File
Format) - Click on Properties - Extended Properties and
select the fields to log.
We recommend the logging of all
the fields on the Extended Properties tab. Stop and start the
web server after editing the properties to log. Create an entry
in the log file by accessing your web site with a browser and
check if the entry is correctly logged in the log file.
At least the following fields
should be logged:
· Date
· Time
· Client IP address (c-ip)
· User Name (cs-username)
· Server IP address (s-ip)
· Server Port (s-port)
· Method (cs-method)
· URl Stem (cs-uri-stem)
· Url Query (cs-uri-query)
· Protocol Status (sc-status)
· Bytes sent (sc-bytes)*
· Bytes received (cs-bytes)*
· User Agent (cs(User-Agent))* - for browser
information
· Cookie (cs(Cookie))* - for cookie information
· Referer (cs(Referer))* - for referrer information
Fields marked with an * are NOT logged by IIS by default.
Of particular importance is the Protocol Status field. Sometimes
logging of this field is turned off with the result that
SurfStats produces no reports. This field contains the status
code for the HTTP request (e.g. 200 for success, 404 for page
not found etc.). This field is crucial in log file analysis.
Please note that IIS reserves and locks a 64 KB block in the
current log file it is logging to. The current 64 KB block in
use cannot be added to the reporting database. Some clients
reported an error “Database empty” and expected this information
to be added to the database.
Also note that the default setting for ASP buffering is ON in
IIS5/6. This causes the sc-bytes field to be logged as 0 as the
web page is served from the web server's cache. You should
switch ASP buffering OFF to log this field. If you do not do
this, you will not be able to track bandwidth in reports on ASP
files.
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