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Many statistics about the usage of your web site
are available through the Site Statistics option in the Command
Center. 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.
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How
To View Your Site Statistics (an overview) |
From the Command Center, 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.
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How
To View Your Site Statistics (frames version) |
From the Command Center, 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.
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. |
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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.
^Back to Top |
Site
Statistics Tool
