Does anyone else look at their server logs and what it is doing?
When I first started self-hosting, I used things like Analog, AWStats and Webalizer that read and graphed the server logs. Later on I used Google Analytics, but have decided to go back to reading the logs.
I’m also looking at other analyzers such as W3Perl, which is proving a pig to configure, and a couple of others.
The programs have been abandoned, forked, even abandoned again, but they still work. If anyone is interested in what these almost 30 year old programs look like and my experience with them, then https://brisray.com/utils/stats.htm is probably as good a place to start as any.
I’ve just started doing this, having moved to a shared hosting plan with cPanel that has these tools installed by default. I definitely get more insights than I would/do with a JS tracker.
I like AWStats as well. It’s one of the easiest to use and I love that it makes it’s own links so you can see all the results in each section instead of just the top 10.
Google Analytics is good and really does look nice but when they moved to GA4 I asked myself why I was using it. I don’t sell anything, don’t do any advertising so not interested in conversion rates, and not interested in tracking IP addresses through different pages.
The logs also record things that GA isn’t very good at.such as what was actually put into the address bar. That helps as it shows how someone is trying to get out of the web folders into the OS itself, or run some sort of script. That in turn helps me keep the server protected.
- it’s a 10 year old