Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

  • Books
    • Content Strategy for WordPress (2015)
    • WordPress for Web Developers (2013)
    • Beginning WordPress 3 (2010)
  • Blog
    • Fascism Watch (2016-17)
    • Content Modeling for WordPress series
    • WordPress Hidden Gems series
  • Work
    • Portfolio
    • Services
    • WordPress Plugins
    • WordPress Themes
    • Presentations and Interviews
    • on GitHub →
  • About
    • Press Kit
  • Contact
    • Mailing List

Server log analysis

June 23, 2005 Stephanie Leary 6 Comments

I’m swamped with work, and in my free time I’ve been writing madly. And I’m getting back to that in just a second, but I wrote this up quickly as a reply to someone and then realized that it was too long and I really should just post it here instead.

I just went through, for the second time in a year, an evaluation of of the professional-grade log analyzers. Since this might be helpful to someone…

Free ones: Webalizer, AWStats, Analog (with Report Magic)

Not free: Urchin, NetTracker, WebTrends, and ClickTracks.

My favorite is Urchin 5, and I’m profoundly grateful that my host offers it as part of my plan. It isn’t cheap — around $900. Then again, the version of WebTrends that offers the same features costs somewhere around $10K.

Webalizer and Analog are the most common free ones, but I like AWStats better than either. The free ones tend to be inflexible, showing you only the most popular 10 pages on your site. If you want to see numbers on a new page that’s getting a lot of traffic right now but hasn’t yet surpassed your top 10… no go.

And then there’s Refer, which doesn’t produce pretty graphs of any kind, but is really great for tracking inbound links as they appear. ShortStat is also really cool. (This seems to be the most recent version.) I gather it’s soon to be replaced by Mint. These two don’t analyze logs, but rely on bits of PHP embedded in the page instead. Both are free. (I’m guessing Mint won’t be. Update: Ah, I was right. Here’s the scoop on Mint.)

Update 3/30/06: A Complete Guide To Web Analytics Solutions has a more complete list and more up-to-date info. Check the comments on the post for readers’ suggestions on packages the authors missed.

for Authors, Life, Web Design

Comments

  1. pericat says

    June 23, 2005 at 10:54 pm

    I like Refer a lot. I use it to populate the spammer-be-gone section of my htaccess, on the theory that spurious linkage comes from the same set of people that run spambot scripts.

    My hosting provider has been testing AWStats for the last few months and I greatly prefer it over Webalizer; it stores a much more comprehensive picture. And the colours are nicer, too.

    Another point in Refer’s favour, as opposed to sitemeter or the like: Refer’s data is stored locally. The idea of perfect strangers monitoring my traffic kinda squicks me.

    Reply
  2. steph says

    June 24, 2005 at 8:32 am

    Webalizer is unnecessarily ugly.

    Good idea about populating the spam-be-gone section that way!

    Reply
  3. Phil says

    June 24, 2005 at 8:42 am

    All ugliness is necessary. Long live Webalizer! :)

    Reply
  4. Justine Larbalestier says

    June 25, 2005 at 10:45 am

    I have statcounter and it’s pretty useful. I can certainly always see how a new page is going etc.

    Reply
  5. steph says

    June 26, 2005 at 3:58 pm

    That’s an amazing amount of features for a free service. They drive me nuts, though — along with sitemeter, as pericat mentioned — because their servers aren’t as instantaneous as they like to advertise, and when they slow down, the tracked pages take ages to load. Statistics really, really need to be kept on the same server as the site.

    Reply
  6. Radborne says

    March 1, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    i dont usually comment, but after reading through so much info i had to say thanks

    Reply

Leave a Reply to pericat Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fascism Watch

The Fascism Watch is a daily(ish) news roundup. View all the previous Fascism Watch posts »

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

Kindle Nook iBooks Kobo Smashwords

WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

Copyright © 2021 Stephanie Leary