 Site
Statistics Tool
Many of our accounts come with this great statisitcs tool.
In addition, we also offer a much more robsust AWStats program
which is idea for clients who really want to focus on search
engine rank, and marketing. For information on AWStats, please
contact our support department.
Note: To fully understand
the meaning of the stats, please be sure to read this section.
Site Statistics Overview
Many statistics about the usage of your web site
are available through the Site Statistics option in the Control Panel. The statistics are generated by the http-analyze program,
by Rent-A-Guru.
Note: Though this documentation provides an overview on using the
Site Statistics option, it does not include detailed information
regarding all of the statistics that you can view. For an in-depth
explanation of these, please visit the Http-Analyze web site, located
at http://www.netstore.de/Supply/http-analyze/ and follow the link
to Documentation.
How To View Your Site Statistics (an overview)
From the Control Panel, select the Site Statistics
option. The WWW Access Statistics page displays.
There are a number of options available on this
main statistics menu page:
-
Statistics for the last 12 months: Shows the web statistics
for the 12-month period ending in the current month.
-
Statistics for <Year>: Shows the web statistics
for the given year.
-
Frames version: Provides an alternate way of viewing
statistics for users that prefer it.
(For this explanation, a non-frame example will
be shown.)
Select the Statistics for the last 12 months link.
First, a Navigation Window opens which provides a way for you to
navigate through the different displays of statistics. It is here
that you can determine which month you would like to focus on.
Also, in the existing browser window, a new page
displays, which displays a chart and table of statistics for the
current month.
The main statistics displayed on this
page are:
-
Hits: The number of times your site
is given a request for information from a web browser.
(Note: a web page with two images would generate three
“hits”, one each for the images, and one for
the page itself.)
-
Files: The number of times a web browser
requests a file and the server on which your site resides
delivers that file.
-
Pageviews: The number of times a web
browser requests a text or html file, which shows a truer
reflection of the actual documents requested from your
site.
-
Sessions: The number of unique hosts
accessing the server during a given period of time.
-
Kbytes Sent: The amount of data sent
during the summary period as reported by the server.
For more detailed explanations of these and many
other statistical terms related to your site, please visit the Http-Analyze
web site by clicking on the link in the bottom left corner of the
Site Statistics screen. Once at the Http-Analyze site, follow the
link for Documentation, then Interpretation of the Results.
Use the Navigation Window to select a specific
month. Once you are at the month level of data, many more statistic
options become available to you.
Selecting one of these statistical options in
the Navigation window causes the statistics to be displayed in the
main browser window. For instance, selecting the Hits by Day link
results in the following (shown below).
Each link in the navigation window will display
a different set of statistics in the main window.
Note: At various times in the Site Statistics pages, you will have
the opportunity to select a Frames Version of the statistics or
a 3D Model version. The Frames Version of this option will work
with most newer versions of web browsers. The 3D Model Version of
this option requires special VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)
software to be installed on your computer before proceeding. For
more information see, the Http-Analyzeweb site.
How To View Your Site Statistics (frames version)
From the Control Panel, select the Site Statistics
option. The WWW Access Statistics page displays
Select the FramesVersion link below the Statistics
for the last 12 months text. The same summary chart and table appear
in the main frame of the browser, but rather than having the statistic
controls open in a new “Navigation Window”, they appear
instead in the control frame to the left.
The main statistics displayed on this page are
the same as described in the previous section. For more detailed
explanations of these and many other statistical terms related to
your site, please visit the Http-Analyze web site by clicking on
the link in the bottom left corner of the Site Statistics screen.
Once at the Http-Analyze site, follow the link for Documentation,
then Interpretation of the Results.
Use the Control Frame to select a specific
month. Then select the type of statistic you would like to see by
clicking on the appropriate button in the Control Frame. The statistical
information that you requested appears in the main frame.
What it all means
When looking at different charts there are color
coded columns along the top that indicate an item begin measured
for a given time frame. For example, "Sessions" (the most
important column) is the number of unique visitors that have come
to your site.
Term |
Color |
Meaning |
Hits |
|
A hit is any response from the server on behalf
of a request sent from a browser. This includes any
response from the server, not only text files or documents.
If, for example, a HTML page has two images embedded,
the server generates three hits if this page is requested:
one hit for the HTML page itself and two hits for the
two inline images. |
Files |
|
If the user requests a document and the server successfully
sends back a file for this request, this is counted
as a Code 200 (OK) response. Any such response
is counted for as a file. Again, "file" here
means any kind of a file. |
Cached
Code 304 |
|
A Code 304 (Not Modified) response is generated
by the server if a document hasn't been updated since
the last time it was requested by the user and therefore
there was no need to actually send the files for this
document. This happens if the browser (or a caching
proxy server between the browser and your web server)
still has an up-to-date copy of the page in it's local
storage (cache) and therefore can display the page without
requesting the actual content. This technique is used
to reduce network traffic, but it also causes an inaccuracy
in the statistics reports regarding the number of visitors,
because the browser or proxy usually sends only one
such a conditional request per user session if it still
holds an up-to-date copy of the file. However, the ratio
between files and 304's reflects the efficiency
of overall caching mechanisms for at least those hits
which made it's way to the server. |
Pageviews |
|
Pageviews are all files which either have a text
file suffix (.html, .text) or which are
directory index files. This number allows to estimate
the number of "real" documents transmitted
by your server. If defined correctly, the analyzer rates
text files (documents) as pageviews. Those pageviews
do not include images, CGI scripts, Java applets or
any other HTML objects except all files ending with
one of the pre-defined pageview suffixes, such as .html
or .text. See also the PageView directive
in the section Configuration File in the manpage. |
KBytes transferred |
|
This is the amount of data sent during the whole
summary period as reported by the server. Note that
some servers log the size of a document instead of the
actual number of bytes transferred. While in most cases
this is the same, if a user interrupts the transmission
by pressing the browser's stop button before the page
has been received completely, some servers (for example
all Netscape web servers) do not log the amount of data
transferred but the amount of data which would have
been transferred if the user would have completely loaded
the page. |
Sessions |
|
Similar to unique sites, this is the number
of unique hosts accessing the server during a given
time-window. This time-window is one day by default
for backward compatibility, but it can be changed with
the option -u or the Session directive
in the configuration file. For example, if the time-window
is two hours, all accesses from a certain host in less
than 2 hours after the first access from this host are
lumped together into one session. All following accesses
more than 2 hours apart from the first access will be
counted as a new session. This way you may get an estimated
number of how many sessions are started on different
sites to access your server. |
Other Things you can look at (frames version)
Along the left column of the frames view of your
stats you'll see several orange links. These provide a little more
depth to the stats in the main window.
|
