Essential data including log file locations, date limits and other settings are defined in the Project properties window. These options are separated into two tabs: General and Global Filters.

 

General

 

Log files

 

You can choose one or more log file sets (locations). Logs will be combined - they don't need to originate from the same website and they can be even written in different format. You can distinguish statistics from different websites by entering a prefix that will be added to file requests. Wildcards and archive types are also allowed.

 

Three types of log file locations are supported: Local, FTP and HTTP. In case you select FTP or HTTP type, only changed files will be automatically downloaded before the analysis.

 

Examples:

C:\Log Files\*.log

C:\Log Files\2004*.zip

ftp://myserver.com/logs/*.gz

 

Use Log File Location editor to define sets.

 

Dates

 

Limit dates that you want to examine. Web Log Storming remembers which dates are contained in specific log files, so it doesn't need to re-read all of the log files every analysis.

 

Read all

       

All selected log files are read and analyzed. Depending on size of log files, this could be time-consuming and it's not recommended.

 

Read last

 

Reads last X days only. This option is recommended for regular analysis.

 

Read between

 

Define exact start and end date to read and analyze. Use it when you want to analyze a specific time period.

 

Your domains

 

Domains added here (separated by comma or semicolon) will be excluded from referrer reports.

 

Examples:

mydomain.net

acme.com, otheracme.com

 

Default index file

 

All web servers send a default page when a visitor accesses a directory without a filename. For example, if visitor points his browser to http://www.myserver.com/, depending on configuration, the server will actually send a http://www.myserver.com/index.html page. In this case, enter index.html here and all .../ request will be replaced with .../index.html in the reports.

 

Examples:

index.html

index.htm

index.php

default.asp

 

Time zone correction

 

If your web server doesn't log time for your time zone, you can enter the time difference here.

 

Convert URLs to lowercase

 

Apache servers are case sensitive, IIS is not. If you are using the Apache server, page.html, Page.html and PAGE.HTML are all different pages. IIS treats those URLs as the same page. Check this box to convert all URLs to lowercase.

 

Multiple sites in one log file

 

Sometimes web servers log requests from several different websites are placed in the same file. When you are only interested in one (or few) of them, check this option. Web Log Storming uses Your domains setting (see above) to filter out logs that should be ignored.

 

Consider queries as part of file name

 

Sometimes websites use queries to determine which content to send, while there is just one physical file that's requested. This is very common with some Content Management Systems. For example: /index.php?page_id=1 and /index.php?page_id=2 could be completely different pages. If this is the case with your website, check this option and those two URLs will be treated as two different pages.

 

Automatically resolve IPs

 

If this options is checked, IP to host name resolving will be automatically executed for currently loaded domains.

 

Global Filters

 

When a large number of log files needs to be read and analyzed, you would be strongly advised to use global filters to save system resources.

 

Using global filters will slightly slow down reading (because of additional comparisons), but speed will be remarkably improved later during multiple analyses, as the result of reduced memory consumption.

 

All fields support wildcards (see separate topic for details), and you can use the "include and exclude" editor by clicking on the pencil button.

 

Note that, due to technical limitations, these filters apply to hits, not sessions. In other words, if you define Referrer global filter, reports will include only the first (direct) hit originating from it. If you want to see complete sessions use parameters instead.

 

 

 

 

Replace file names

 

If you wish to replace web server file names during analyzing, you can do that here. This way, any accessed file that matches left column wildcard, in reports will be replaced by right column text.

 

Examples:

/images/*                /anyimage.jpg

Grouping all hits to /images/ directory as a single imaginary file /anyimage.jpg

 

*.gif                        /notimportant

*.css                        /notimportant

Grouping all *.gif and *.css hits as single imaginary file /notimportant

 

 

See also

       Log File Location editor

       Wildcards