Serendipity35

Hits, Sites and Kilobytes

There comes a time when anyone who has ever uploaded anything onto the web has had to stop and wonder, "Is anyone really looking at this?" and "How would I know if anyone did?"

On the simplest level you could open your webserver's logfiles and count all the accesses to your website and/or some specific files you are curious about. Though if you've never looked at a webserver's logfiles before, that method will cure you of any desire to ever do it again. On a less simple (and more geeky) level you could log into your webserver's host using a command shell and type some command like:

$cat /var/log/httpd-access.log | grep index.* > how_many_hits_have_I
$vim how_many_hits_have_I

Each line in the how_many_hits_have_I file would count as one hit on your website.
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Yech. That's also enough to make you stop caring about who is seeing whatever magnum opus you've published for the world to admire.

Commercial webtracking tools like WebTrends and Urchindo a very nice job of displaying the traffic to your website, but those commercial tools have commercial pricetags. They often command license fees starting at around $900. Fortunately there are some open source alternatives.

Webalizer: An open source webserver logfile graphical analysis tool that features detailed reports of accesses to your server broken down by raw hits, page views, data transfer, referrer, browser, country and more.It also features a history file that tracks data by months and/or years to show long term trends. Originally only available on Unix and Linux based servers, Webalizer now has a version that runs under Windows and can analyze Microsoft IIS server files. Webalizer is configured andrun from a comand line, so some familiarity with using a command line tool is required.

Logaholic: Based on the open source tools PHP and MySQL,Logaholic is not free (currently $47), but its database backend allows for a more detailed analysis (by day and by hour, for example). Essentially a set of scripts, Logaholic requires that the PHP language be installed and it also requires read and write access to a MySQL database. It doesn't currently support Microsoft Windows servers.

AWStats: Free to use under the GNU Public License, AWStats combines webserver log tracking and analysis with FTP and mail server logfile analysis. It requires that your webserver supports Perl and CGI and can be run from the command line or from the CGI. It supports almost all platforms, servers, and logfiles and even claims to be able to analyze the logfiles created by streaming servers.

There are online services that also offer web tracking from a simple hit-counter that you embed in a web page to more sophisticated solutions (some free) that actually provide you with analytic statistics. Some of these hosted solutions may supply their reports with embedded advertising and be aware that they might sell your web site traffic information to third parties.

Besides website traffic analysis being a very good tool to hone your content and target your audience, just finding out statistically who is actually visiting your website can really help on those days when you feel like you are that lone voice shouting into the wilderness.