cPanel automatically updates web stats information every 24 hours or however often your web
host has set it to happen. Generating web stats takes a lot of server CPU time (often referred to as
load).
If your website is designed to attract public attention, (as opposed to a site that you only want friends
and family to visit) then you need some way to keep track of who is visiting your site and what they are
doing while they are there. Knowing what pages or files are most popular and who visits them can help
you improve your website layout and even increase traffic to your site. However, it isn't practical to
require every visitor to register or answer a poll or survey every time they stop by your site.
Raw (Apache) Web Logs
Thankfully that is not necessary in most cases, since most visitors automatically provide your site
with basic information about where they came from, how they found your site and what sort of
computer they are using during this visit. These data are called web statistics. The information is
stored in a special file called a raw web log. A raw web log is essentially a text file with
information about every person or machine that visited your site and what they requested in the
order those requests were made. This file can grow to be quite large and very difficult to interpret.
The average raw web log contains entries that look something like this:
111.111.111.111 - - [31/Oct/2005:12:22:57 -0500] "GET /gallery/download/1000/movie.zip
HTTP/1.0" 200 105493 "http://domain.com/gallery/download/1000/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)"
In the above example, 111.111.111.111 is the IP address of the user that made this request followed
by the date and time of the request. The request that was made of your website appears in quotes (in
this case, the user is trying to get (download) a file called movie.zip from within the 1000 directory
on your site). The status code is listed next (200). A status code lets you know what happened with
this request. In this case, 200 tells us that the file was successfully downloaded.
If you would like to know what a status code means, you can view the full list with
explanations at http://w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html.
The size of the downloaded file is listed in bytes (1,024 bytes = 1 Kb). The exact URL request
is listed next. Finally, some information about the user's web browser and computer platform
is listed.
There will be one of these lines in the raw web log for every click (commonly referred to in web
logs as a hit) a user makes while visiting your site. There may be hundreds or even thousands of
hits for each visit a user makes to your website (often called a session).
You can download the raw web log for your website by clicking on Raw Access Log in cPanel.
You will be presented with a list of the raw web logs for your account (including all parked
domains, add-on domains, and subdomains). Click one to download it to your computer (the file
will be compressed). You can also download your raw web logs via FTP by using one of the
special FTP URLs provided at the bottom of the FTP Account screen.
Either way, the raw web log will be compressed when you download it. You must uncompress it
by using a program capable of handling gZip files like the free Allume Stuffit Expander, which can
handle nearly any compression format. The
uncompressed log file will bear the same name as your website (domain.com). This name may cause
some problems for you if you have a .com domain name when you try to open it since .com files are
typically DOS command files (similar to an application on Windows or Mac OS X). You may want
to rename the file to domain.txt so double clicking on it will open the file in a text editor.
Raw Log Control
You can control how raw logs are handled by cPanel by clicking on the Raw Log Manager from
the main cPanel screen. Here you can tell cPanel to save old raw web logs to your home directory
at the end of every month so you can access them later. cPanel typically removes raw web logs at
the end of each month unless you say otherwise. You can also save every old month or only the
most recent past month (if it is November now, cPanel saves only October's old raw web logs).
Save changes when you have it set the way that you prefer. Below the Save button are links to
download old compressed web logs for your main domain and any add-on domains or subdomains.
Web Stats to the Rescue!
As you can imagine, this can make the raw web log for even a modestly busy website nearly
impossible to interpret without some help. Thankfully, cPanel comes with several tools that make
interpreting all this data much easier. These tools are called web stats programs. They take the
raw web log data and turn that data into manageable charts and graphs. The resulting data is much
easier for mere mortals to understand.
To view the web statistics for your site, click on Web/FTP Stats in cPanel (there is a separate link for
data only concerning subdomains called Subdomain Stats). From here you can access all of the tools
cPanel provides to help you understand more about who is using your site and for what purpose.
cPanel automatically updates web stats information every 24 hours or however often your web
host has set it to happen. Generating web stats takes a lot of server CPU time (often referred to as
load). For this reason, most web hosts won't have the web stats set to update more than one time
per day. If you need more up-to-date information use the update link at the top of the Awstats
report (if your host offers it) or download your raw web log and use a web-log-processing
program on your local computer to interpret the data. If you find that your web stats haven't been
updated in a few days, contact your web host for assistance.
Each web stats program may define exactly what constitutes a hit, session, or bandwidth
use differently. This means that you will have some difficulty comparing the results
between different web stats programs. You might want to find a program that you like
best and only compare results from that one.
Analog
Analog doesn't use a lot of graphics to get its point across so you may prefer this if you are
accessing cPanel with a dial-up connection as it will load the quickest.
Each section of the report that Analog produces has links to every other section so you can skip to
the section you are interested in the most. Use your web browser's save page feature if you want to
save the content of this particular report.
If you have any questions about how Analog works or how it defines terms like hits or sessions, or
computes bandwidth, visit the Analog website at http://analog.cx/docs/meaning.html.
Awstats
Awstats uses more graphics than Analog, but it also provides more information about those
visiting your website than Analog does.
The Awstats report is divided into two sections, the sidebar with the name of your domain or
subdomain that this report covers and links to the various sections of the report, and the main
section. The top of the main section of the report contains links to any previous monthly reports
and to update the report with up-to-the minute data (if your web host permits it). You can also
click the picture of a flag to change the language the report is generated in.
If your web host does permit the update now feature in Awstats be careful not to over-use
it since it uses a lot of CPU load.
Below that are the various graphs and data of the report itself. Use the sidebar to scroll to the
section you are interested in the most. To save this report you should use your web browser's save
page feature. Documentation on how to use Awstats and read the reports it generates can be found at
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html.
Statistics Configuration
This feature is found on the main cPanel screen if your web host offers it. Here you are able to
turn on or off any web statistics packages that your web host offers. While having several different
web stats programs might be nice, they do use disk space in your account. Some, like Webalizer
and Urchin, can use vast amounts of disk space. I recommend that you try using each web stats
program, find your favorite, and disable the others. Why waste disk space on web stats you do not
use? If you don't use any of them, you can turn them all off.
Other Related Tools
While the web stats programs mentioned above offer a lot of data about visitors to your website,
they are not the only tools that cPanel provides to help you figure out who is visiting your site and
what they are doing while there.
Last Visitors
This tool parses the raw web log and displays the most recent visitors. The text explaining this
feature in cPanel claims that it displays the last 300 visitors, but it actually displays the last 300 hits
(clicks). This tool can take a few seconds to be displayed after you click on the Last Visitors link.
The display looks somewhat similar to the raw web log output, except that it is cleaned up and
sorted by IP address of the visitor in reverse chronological order (most recent hits at the top). You
can see which files or pages the visitor tried to access, when they visited, and some basic
information about them.
Bandwidth
Each web stats program keeps track of bandwidth usage, but each stats program computes
bandwidth differently. The bandwidth tool shows you exactly what bandwidth cPanel counts
towards your monthly bandwidth limit, so you should use it to keep an eye on bandwidth rather
than web stats programs. | 
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