> Issue 1: > ======== > First let start with Unique Visitor. From my understanding a unique > visitor is a host that came to a web site. A unique visitor can have more > than one visits, and a visit can consist of more than 1 page viewed. Not > let's say I connect to the internet using my ISP that uses dynamic IP > addressing. If I go to my own main url site (i.e the base index.html) will > AWStats count this as a Unique Visitor if the IP address changes from each > connection despite the fact that I visted the site myself ?
A unique visitor is one IP address accessing your website in one day, I think. If you have a dynamic IP and you visit your website you will be counted as one visitor for that day, unless you IP address is reallocated during the day and you visit again. Most dynamic IPs I have experienced do not change that frequently. Telstra cable - around 3 months. When I had dyamic ADSL - around a week with the one IP. Also I don't know about your network setup, if you are hosting at home its most likely all the connections would be local connections. > > For such a visit does this unique visitor falls in the category "Direct > address / Bookmarks" from AWStats "Connect to site from" ? > > If so then does "Direct address / Bookmarks" means I'm the one visited > the site, i.e if most of the hits are from hosts that resolves to my ISP > domain name provider ? There is a HTTP field called referrer in which the browser provides the URL of a website that has linked to your website. If the referrer is empty then it is a "direct address / bookmark". That means the user has typed it in or selected a bookmark. Otherwise they have followed a link. If the majority of hits resolve to you, chances are you have been the major viewer of your website yes. Direct address / Bookmarks does not imply you though as your friends may have bookmarked your website. > > Issue 2: > ========= > If I connect to my site via ftp or SSH is this also logged as Unique > Visitor ? Does uploads and downloads counts as visits ? Awstats is just a program processing error_log and access_log. This is only connected to httpd. You can set it up to log mail and ftp but this is done separately with a different conf file. > > Issue 3: > ========= > AWStats has a section called "Authenticated users (Top 10)". What falls in > the category "Other logins (and/or anonymous users)" ? Sorry not sure, I would guess it would be the logins that don't make the top 10 or the anonymous log ins? > > Issue 4: > ========== > Cron scripts that accesses web pages not via browser but command line. > Does AWStats count stats for this as hits and logged them as Unique > Visitors for host that resolve to the domain name where the cron is > executed ? By default they are included. There is an option called SkipHosts which can be used to skip them. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
