OpenWebScope™
Help & User Documentation

OpenWebScope™
« Webserver Logfile Analyzer - Visitor Reporter »
for Win95 / Win98 / NT4 / NT5
Website: http://www.openwebscope.com
Email: support@leechsoftware.com

Written by Shawn C. Reimerdes <scr@itg.net>

©opyright 1999, Leech Software, Inc.
295 Greenwich St - Suite #260
NYC, NY 10007
http://www.leechsoftware.com

INDEX

I. Introduction
   - Quick and Easy Website Visitor and Traffic Reports

II. Getting Started
   - How to install

III. Logfiles

IV. Reports - scheduling, Themes: customizing, filters: excluding information

 

Introduction

Quick and Easy Website Visitor and Traffic Reports

OpenWebScope is a webserver logfile analyzer designed for every webmaster. Simply point it at your server and your will have professional statistics reports produced in HTML format. A quick glance at the report will show you all you need to know about the visitors to your website. Best of all there are full-color Graphs displayed as images that detail each section.  Find out exactly how many visitors are coming, and what sections of your website they are most excited about. These reports can be posted directly to your webserver, saved to a local disk, or emailed directly to you.

We suggest you keep OpenWebScope running at all times -- there are built-in scheduling features so that you can stay updated on your site at all times! The best part is that it uses very little memory, almost no disk space, and can process all of your websites at the same time. Schedule reports to be processed and emailed to you each day!
Note: keeping the program minimized to the system tray reduces memory consumption.

 

Getting Started

How to install

 

Logfiles

HWhat is a logfile

Each time a user visits your website (webserver) they leave behind an invisible trail in the form of multiple entries to a logfile which is stored on the disk local to the webserver in a huge logfile. OpenWebScope will analyze this complex array of data and produce a clear statistical analysis for you.

Q:  What is a logfile?
A:  Your webserver stores a text file that details all the information about a visitor on your website. This includes webbrowser type, what files they downloaded, what pages were most popular, etc. This logfile is what OpenWebScope will analyze to produce a clear report about your website and it's visitors.

Q:  Why do I want reports?
A:  Find out where users are visiting, what sections are most popular, etc. Best of all, you can charge people to provide these detailed statistics emailed directly to them every month!

Q:  What type of logfile do I have?
A:  Don't worry, it supports all the major web servers : Netscape, Miscrosoft, Apache, etc.

Q:  Where is my logfile located?
A:  Depending on your server, it can have many different names and formats. Some servers have a "logs" directory where a file such as "access.log" or "access_log" is located.

Q:  I have a website on tripod.com or xoom.com can I use this?
A:  No.  Unless you insert a CGI program in your homepage that would store a common logfile format file on your free server space. 

We have created a small Perl script that will create standard logfile entries to a file that OpenWebScope can that read.  You can download it from here, feel free to modify it.

Q:  My webserver is located on a seperate UNIX machine, can I process it too?
A:  Sure, you can dynamically ready logfiles via the FTP protocol. You need to have an FTP server running on the machine where the logfiles are located. For example, select "Remote Logfile" and enter the full path and filename of the remote logfile. If you cannot figure out where it is located, send email to your local system admin. You also need to enter an FTP server name (ftp.yourserver.com) and your username/password.

Q:  What are all these IP address doing in my reports, why are there no countries?
A:  You can enable "Reverse DNS Lookups" from the Options menu. This will make the conversions from IP addresses to domain names.

 

There are a number of different webservers on the market and each one of them adheres to different format for storing this file. You need not worry about which you have unless you have a non-standard webserver, if this is the case please send us a copy of your logfile and we will add support for it.

EXAMPLE logfile lines:

Common Logfile Format:
jay.bird.com - fred [14/Mar/1996:17:45:35 +0000] "GET /~sret1/ HTTP/1.0" 200 1243

Common Logfile Format Extended (NCSA combined):
jay.bird.com - [14/Mar/1996:17:45:35 +0000] "GET /~sret1/ HTTP/1.0" 200 1243
"http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/" "Mozilla/2.0 (X11; I; HP-UX A.09.05 9000/735)"

Microsoft IIS Common:
207.111.105.145, -, 6/8/98, 10:03:20, W3SVC1, WINDOG, 207.111.105.145,
130, 343, 182, 304, 0, GET, /hcsweb/index.html, -,

W3C Standard - Extended Logfile format:
#Fields: date time c-ip cs-username s-sitename s-computername s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query sc-status sc-win32-status sc-bytes cs-bytes time-taken s-port cs(User-Agent) cs(Cookie) cs(Referer)
1997-12-01 08:29:50 129.20.88.11 - W3SVC1 PC-BOB 139.30.18.11 GET /Web/UMR653.htm - 200 0 7824 340 11457 80 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+4.0;+Windows+NT) - -

Configuring Reports

All the reports are written in HTML 1.1 format and can be placed in a local directory or on your webserver via FTP.  Reports contain Graphs that are stored as GIF images in unique filenames on your server. Themes dictate the style and color of your reports. You can choose a theme that best suits and matches your website. Note: To change a website theme you must have the "Advanced Settings" enabled in the Options menu. If you would like the statistics tables to have GIF headers instead of plain-text, you can enable it from the Themes menu. There is a directory called "icons" which has all the images which get copied to the report destination each time you run a report. These images will be placed in a newly created subdirectory under your desired report destination.

You can choose which statistical tables you would like to appear with the Report section of the website profile.

Scheduling

Scheduling allows you to run your website statistics 24 hours a day without user intervention. Use this to keep an updated report on your website at all times. 

We suggest a time interval of an hour or a day at minimum.   When you are not monitoring the statisitcs, you can minimize the program to the system tray to free some memory for your system.


Filters

If you would like to make your report more focused, you can enter filters which will remove all statistics and details that match.  For example, if you don't want any reference to the dozens of GIF files stored in your '/images/' directory to clog up your report -- you could enter '/images' in the directory filter.   Alternatively, you may want to exclude every GIF file from all directories from appearing, simply enter 'GIF' in the File Types filter list.

There are three types of information you can have excluded from your reports : Hostnames/IP addresses, file types, directories.

Hostnames: enter your local computers so you don't get counted as a visitor. (frntpage1.myhome.net)

File Types: you may not want images to show up. (GIF, JPG)

Directories: you can exclude certain areas of your website, or limit it to a single dir if you want to single out a sub-divided website. (/images, /~cust1, /myweb)

 

Proxy Server Setup

If you access the internet through a proxy server then you must change your site configuration. 
In each site profile, where it says "FTP server" - enter your proxy server name, AND where it says "username" - enter "username@YOUR_FTP_SERVER"

 

OpenWebScope Website Statistics, written by Shawn C. Reimerdes <scr@itg.net>
Special thanks to Gregory C. Tulumbas <gtulumba@cisco.com> for his graphics expertise,
and to Neill Jordan <neill@i33.com> for all his help from day one.

(C)opyright 1999, Leech Software, Inc.
295 Greenwich St - Suite #260
NYC, NY 10007
http://www.leechsoftware.com