As a similar small business user I adopted Analog for much the same reason on referral from another user.
I use the basic / standard analog.cfg file as it comes with the package and apart from adding HOSTNAME "[hooklinks]" and leaving HOSTURL "none" as I am only using it for desktop information, I just added an * asterisk to add a wildcard action to the LOGFILE "*.log" command.
This has provided me with all the basic information to check for pages served, visitors, popular pages, error pages etc that enables me to gain an understanding of what is happening with the web site i look after. I am sure there is more information than this available that may be extracted should it be required, but as a standard .cfg file it works extremely well when you apply these couple of changes.
The LOGFILE "*.log" command using the * asterisk allows multiple logs and individual logs to be analysed without needing to specify names or numbers, singly or in sequences.
Dependent on who your ISP is there may be a variation in log file provided, some of mine provide a monthly 'access_log' which can be downloaded at any time or as an archive at the end of the month.
Other ISPs provide daily logs that are date identified as '20060121.log' with these they can be collected individually daily or as opportunity dictates and stored in a folder name for the give month and year. These are eventually deleted when they exceed reserved serve space as I have found to my cost in the past. They do also eat into your space if you have a limited allocation!
This is where the LOGFILE "*.log" command comes in handy as it is then useful to just drag all the months logs into the Analog application folder and run Analog and you will get an accumulative report for all the logs. The date naming convention allows all the years logs to be analysed by putting 3,6 or 12 monts worth of logs into the application folder. Its a bit of a pain in some ways but you get the results!
Like wise if you run the months 'access_log' in the same way the single cfg file will handle this.
One stage further by renaming the monthly 'access_logs' after download with a month / year ID (10-2005access.log) you can run an 3.6 or 12 month report by dragging all the files into Analog and running the program.
I'm sure you will get plenty of advice from those who use the program in greater depth, but for the average web masters needs, who want to run the analysis on their desktop, this will give you a superb result.
David
On 24 Jan 2006, at 15:35, Rosemarie wrote:
Hi,
I hope that some one can help. I run a small business on the north west coast of Scotland and have built web sites for myself and several of my clients. In the past I have used an American based firm for obtaining hits to the sites, registering each individually. My local server. Cali.co.uk has recommend the analog programme as being much netter. I have made a start and included my own business name and URL.in the config, and seen the results. But I am not sure if I should then go into config and add all the other names or if not then how do I set up each individual one on my computer. I have printed off all the read me file but am getting somewhat bogged down with that, I really need it a little more simplified.
Hoping that you can help
Regards Rosemarie.
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