| The yearly (index) report shows
statistics for a 12 month period, and links to each month.
The monthly report has detailed statistics for that month
with additional links to any URL's and referrers found.
The various totals shown are explained below. Hits
Any request made to the server which is logged, is
considered a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything...
html pages, graphic images, audio files, cgi scripts,
etc... Each valid line in the server log is counted
as a hit. This number represents the total number
of requests that were made to the server during the
specified report period.
Files
Some requests made to the server, require that the
server then send something back to the requesting
client, such as a html page or graphic image. When
this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files
total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits'
and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests'
and 'outgoing responses'.
Pages
Pages are, well, pages! Generally, any HTML document,
or anything that generates an HTML document, would
be considered a page. This does not include the other
stuff that goes into a document, such as graphic images,
audio clips, etc... This number represents the number
of 'pages' requested only, and does not include the
other 'stuff' that is in the page. What actually constitutes
a 'page' can vary from server to server. The default
action is to treat anything with the extension '.htm',
'.html' or '.cgi' as a page.
Sites
Each request made to the server comes from a unique
'site', which can be referenced by a name or ultimately,
an IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique
IP addresses made requests to the server during the
reporting time period. This DOES NOT mean the number
of unique individual users (real people) that visited,
which is impossible to determine using just logs and
the HTTP protocol (however, this number might be about
as close as you will get).
Visits
Whenever a request is made to the server from a given
IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous
request by the address is calculated (if any). If
the time difference is greater than a preconfigured
'visit timeout' value (or has never made a request
before), it is considered a 'new visit', and this
total is incremented (both for the site, and the IP
address). The default timeout value is 30 minutes
(can be changed), so if a user visits your site at
1:00 in the afternoon, and then returns at 3:00, two
visits would be registered.
Note: in the 'Top Sites' table, the visits total should
be discounted on 'Grouped' records, and thought of
as the "Minimum number of visits" that came
from that grouping instead.
Note: Visits
only occur on PageType requests, that is, for any
request whose URL is one of the 'page' types defined
with the PageType option. Due to the limitation of
the HTTP protocol, log rotations and other factors,
this number should not be taken as absolutely accurate,
rather, it should be considered a pretty close "guess".
KBytes
The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the amount of
data, in KB, that was sent out by the server during
the specified reporting period. This value is generated
directly from the log file, so it is up to the web
server to produce accurate numbers in the logs (some
web servers do stupid things when it comes to reporting
the number of bytes). In general, this should be a
fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing
traffic the server had, regardless of the web servers
reporting quirks.
Note: A kilobyte
is 1024 bytes, not 1000 :)
Top Entry and Exit Pages
The Top Entry and Exit Pages give a rough estimate
of what URL's are used to enter your site, and what
the last pages viewed are. Because of limitations
in the HTTP protocol, log rotations, etc... this number
should be considered a good "rough guess"
of the actual numbers, however will give a good indication
of the overall trend in where users come into, and
exit, your site.
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