LogReader - screenshots.

The Import button starts the processing of log files. The Analyze button starts Microsoft Excel and creates a Workbook with all the statistics and data found.

LogReader screenshot

Following is a screenshot from the main window in LogReader. You can download a free 30-day trial of LogReader from here.

Database

The Database tab contains the settings for accessing a database. If the Add to Database option is enabled, all entries accepted during an Import are stored in the database specified here. In the current version, the format of this database is fixed - an empty Microsoft Access database is provided for reference. In addition, you must currently specify a DSN name; this DSN can point to an Access, Oracle or SQL database as long as the structure is kept as the example. This will be customizable in a later version.

Format

The Format tab contains the settings for the input format. This can currently be in IIS 4/5 format (ie KPN Internet), or the generic Apache logging format (UNIX/Linux, ie Demon Internet). IIS specifies the IP address of the site in the log files. Apache (at least in the UNIX version?) does not provide an IP address, and you can therefore specify the IP address of your website in the "Site IP" field. LogReader supports multiple sites, so you can mix and match.

Paths

Here you specify the path to your log files, including a wildcard filename (ie. "*.log"). When you press return, this directory is scanned and all the files found are listed on the Files tab.

If the "Move processed files to Processed / Invalid subdirectory" option is enabled, each file is moved to a subdirectory (in the logfiles path) after processing. This prevents you from scanning the same file twice (unintentionally). If this option is not enabled, the file is left untouched; this can be very useful if you are playing around with options, and have the "Add to database" option disabled on the Database tab.

Files

This tab lists the files that will be scanned. If files are listed that are not Internet log files, you should change the Path to include a more precise wildcard description. For example, if you specified a path followed by "*.*", all files in the directory are listed here. If all your log files have the extension ".log", you can change the path wildcard to "*.log". Then only the log files would be found and listed here. In the current version any selection is ignored; this will be changed in later versions so that all files are selected by default, and only selected files are actually processed.

Download

The Download tab contains the settings for the calculation of your download volume and count. Here you specify which files (by types, that is the extension) should be considered a "download" instead of a "view". Examples of files the user would typically download are ".exe", ".zip", ".mp3", ".avi" and so forth. All requests for pages with these extensions are added to the Download volume, and the Download count is increased (if it's not a continous download). This is only in effect when the option "Pages with these extensions are added to the download total" is enabled. If you disable this option, the list is ignored. This enables you to get both a full overview of traffic volume and page hits, and another overview that is filtered for downloads.

Ignore

The Ignore tab contains the settings for which page types should be ignored in the statistics. This allows you to view a more accurate report of the page hits. For example, you may want to ignore all images and sound files, along with stylesheets and script files. This would give you an overview over the actual pages that were most requested, how many users visited them, and so forth. This is only in effect when the "Pages with these extensions are ignored" option is enabled. If you disable this option, all pages are included in the statistics.

Ignorer Users

The Ignore Users tab contains the settings for IP addresses that should be ignored in the statistics. This allows you to view a more accurate report of the page hits and number of users.

For example, you may want to ignore all IP addresses on your local network, your webmaster, your designers, friends, and so forth. They will most likely access your site often during the course of work, and should not be included in statistics on your site.

This is only in effect when the "Users with these IP addresses are ignored" option is enabled. If you disable this option, all users are included in the statistics.

Please note that you do not need to ignore known robots; these can be filtered in other ways.

FTP

The FTP tab contains connection information to your FTP site. This allows you to download log files automatically to the log files directory, and perform scheduled processing.

You must provide the name or IP address of your site, the FTP username and password, and the FTP log directory. The current version downloads everything from that directory, while you will soon be able to specify a wildcard filename in the path. This will allow to download only certain files from that directory. If the "Remove downloaded files" option is enabled, the file is removed from the server once it has been downloaded. This is disabled by default, and you should test the FTP functionality thoroughly before enabling this option.

Statistics

The basic statistics are divided into 3 sections:

Entries, hits and users

Traffic / volumes

Users, Referers and Errors

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