AWStats - for tracking your website activity

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Clients often ask me about being able to see their website activity. For example, they want to see how busy their site is, which pages are most popular, the sites directing traffic to their website, and where their visitors are coming from, as well as keywords and keyphrases used by search engines.

Google Anaytics is one of the most popular and comprehensive website visitor tracking software services out there, but can be a bit intimidating for newbies.

I do recommend adding Google Analytics to your website, however, if your hosting company offers cPanel Software with your website hosting package, there is an easier to understand alternative that you may appreciate - at least until you get your PHD in Google Analytics.

This wonderful website tracking tool is call AWStats - Advanced Web Statistics.

Awstats

AWStats is a logging tool that generates ample website statistics, and presents them through a very user-friendly graphical interface.

AWStats Features

AWStats logs all kinds of activity on your server including:

  • SUMMARY: Unique Visitors, Number of Visits, Pages, Hits and Bandwidth
  • HISTORY: Monthly, Days of Month, Days of Week, and Hours
  • Countries of Visitors
  • IP of Hosts
  • Robots and Spider Visits
  • Visits Duration
  • Files Type
  • Downloads
  • Most Viewed: Number of Pages and Hits, Entry and Exit Pages
  • Operating Systems and Browsers
  • Referrers: Origin of links including Direct, eMail, Bookmark Search Engines and Sites
  • Search Engine Keyphrases amd Keywords used to find your site
  • and more...

How to find your AWStats

If your website hosting company offers you cPanel, locating your AWStats is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

cPanel login page

1) Login to your website's cPanel

Typically the website address for your cPanel is:

www.yourwebsite.com/cpanel
OR
www.yourwebsite.com:2082

cPanel - screenshot of home page

2: Scroll down the page and look for the "Logs" section of your cPanel

cPanel Logs

3: Click on the AWStats icon

In the Logs section you will see AWStats icon - highlighted in yellow below.

Once you click on the AWStats icon you'll be directed to the domain name(s) set up on your hosting account. To view the AWStats for a specific domain name (website) click on the magifying glass to the right of that domain name, and you'll be directed to its AWStats!

Conclusion: While AWStats is not nearly as detailed as Google Analytics, it certainly can give you an overview of what is happening on your website and assist with site analysis, and help you determine potentially needed site development and marketing strategies.

Stay tuned for the next blog post "Understanding AWStats".

Posted in Marketing

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