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Understanding your Site Statistics
Currently if you have a Unix based hosting
plan then you can get access to site statistics. Site stats
are idea for analyzing your site traffic. Who visits your
site, where do they come from, what is your most popular page,
what time of the day, month year are users visiting? To understand
what the statistics mean here's a brief description. To view
your stats simply enter www.yourdomainname.com/stats in your
browser, you will then be prompted for a username/password
to gain access.
The yearly (index) report shows statistics
for a 12 Month period, and links to each month. The monthly
report has detailed statistics for that month with additional
links to any URL's and referrers found. The various totals
shown are explained below.
Hits
Any request made to the server which is logged, is considered
a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything... html pages, graphic
images, audio files, cgi scripts, etc... Each valid line in
the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents
the total number of requests that were made to the server
during the specified report period.
Files
Some requests made to the server, require that the server
then send something back to the requesting client, such as
a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered
a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship
between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming
requests' and 'outgoing responses'.
Pages
Pages are, literally just pages. Generally, any HTML document,
or anything that generates an HTML document, would be considered
a page. This does not include graphic images, audio clips,
etc... This number represents the number of 'pages' requested
only, not images or anything else included in the document
featured on the page.
Visits
Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address
(site), the amount of time since a previous request by the
address is calculated (if any). If the time difference is
greater than a pre-configured 'visit timeout' value (or has
never made a request before), it is considered a 'new visit',
and this total is incremented (both for the site, and the
IP address).
Sites
Each request made to the server comes from a unique 'site',
which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an IP address.
The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made
requests to the server during the reporting time period. This
DOES NOT mean the number of unique individual users (real
people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using
just logs and the HTTP protocol (however, this number might
be about as close as you will get).
KBytes
The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the amount of data, in
KB, which was sent out by the server during the specified
reporting period. This value is generated directly from the
log file, so it is up to the web server to produce accurate
numbers in the logs. In general, this should be a fairly accurate
representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server
had. (Note: A kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes)
Top Entry and Exit Pages
The Top Entry and Exit Pages give rough estimates of what
URL's are used to enter your site, and what the last pages
viewed are. Because of limitations in the HTTP protocol, log
rotations, etc... This number should be considered a good
"rough guess" of the actual numbers, however will give a good
indication of the overall trend in where users come into,
and exit, your site.
HOPE THAT HELPS!!
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