Questions:
  1. Definition of terms
  2. What is the difference between number of hits vs. number of page views on the stats page?
  3. What do you mean by transfer being 5000mb? What happens when it goes to zero? Does it increase every month?
  4. In the Site Statistics feature of Control Panle, Is the sessions number the one that tells us how many people have looked at our website?
  5. Server Disk Space Usage
  6. Your Access and Stat Logs
  7. My domain has the ONLINE CONTROL Panel, how do I view my website STATS ?
Answers:
  1. Definition of terms
    The statistics report contains among others the following
    information:
    • the number of hits, 304's, files, pageviews, sessions, data
      sent (in KB)
    • the amount of data requested, transferred, and saved by
      cache (in KB)
    • the number of unique URLs, sites, and sessions per month
    • the number of all response codes other than 200 (OK)
    • the average hits per weekday and for last week
    • the maximum/average hits per day and per hour
    • the number of hits, files, 304's, sites, data sent by day
    • the top 5 days, 24 hours, 5 minutes and 5 seconds of the
      summary period
    • the top 30 most commonly accessed URLs (hits, 304's, data
      sent)
    • the 10 least frequently accessed URLs (hits, 304's, data
      sent)
    • the top 30 client domains accessing your server most often<
    • the top 30 browser types
    • the top 30 referrer hosts
    • the overview/detailed list of all files requested
    • the overview/detailed list of all sites by domain and
      reverse domain
    • the overview/detailed list of all browser types
    • the overview/detailed list of all referrer URLs

    The following table summarizes the meaning of all terms in the statistics report which are not self-explaining:

    Hits: A hit is any response from the server on behalf of a request sent from a browser. This includes any response from the server, not only text files or documents. If, for example, a HTML page has two images embedded, the server generates three hits if this page is requested: one hit for the HTML page itself and two hits for the two inline images.

    Files: If the user requests a document and the server successfully sends back a file for this request, this is counted as a Code 200 (OK) response. Any such response is counted for as a file. Again, "file" here means any kind of a file.

    Code 304: A Code 304 (Not Modified) response is generated by the server if a document hasn't been updated since the last time it was requested by the user and therefore there was no need to actually send the files for this document. This happens if the browser (or a caching proxy server between the browser and your web server) still has an up-to-date copy of the page in it's local storage (cache) and therefore can display the page without requesting the actual content. This technique is used to reduce network traffic, but it also causes an inaccuracy in the statistics reports regarding the number of visitors, because the browser or proxy usually sends only one such a conditional request per user session if it still holds an up-to-date copy of the file. However, the ratio between files and 304's reflects the efficiency of overall caching mechanisms for at least those hits which made it's way to the server.

    Pageviews: Pageviews are all files which either have a text file suffix (.html, .text) or which are directory index files. This number allows to estimate the number of "real" documents transmitted by your server. If defined correctly, the analyzer rates text files (documents) as pageviews. Those pageviews do not include images, CGI scripts, Java applets or any other HTML objects except all files ending with one of the pre-defined pageview suffixes, such as .html or .text.

    Other responses: There are much more responses than only Code 200 (OK) and Code 304 (Not Modified) responses, especially in the coming standard, the HTTP 1.1 protocol specification. For example, the server could generate a Code 302 (Redirected) response if a page has moved, a Code 401 (Unauthorized Request) response if access to the document is denied or a Code 404 (Not Found) response if the requested page does not exist on this server. See the HTML specification for information about all valid responses from a web server. Note that http-analyze does recognize HTTP/1.1 responses according to RFC2068.

    KBytes transferred: This is the amount of data sent during the whole summary period as reported by the server. Note that some servers log the size of a document instead of the actual number of bytes transferred. While in most cases this is the same, if a user interrupts the transmission by pressing the browser's stop button before the page has been received completely, some servers (for example all Netscape web servers) do not log the amount of data transferred but the amount of data which would have been transferred if the user would have completely loaded the page.

    KBytes requested: This is the amount of data requested during the whole summary period. http-analyze computes this number by summing up the values of KBytes transferred and KBytes saved by cache (see below).

    KBytes saved by cache: The amount of data saved by various caching mechanisms such as in proxy servers or in browsers. This value is computed by multiplying the number of Code 304 (Not Modified) requests per file with the size of the corresponding file. Note: Because http-analyze can determine the size of a file only if the file has been requested at least once in the same summary period, the values for KBytes saved by cache and KBytes requested are just approximations of the real values.

    Unique URLs: Unique URLs are the number of all different, valid URLs requested in a given summary period. This shows you the number of all different files requested at least once in the corresponding summary period.

    Unique sites: This is the sum of all unique hosts accessing the server during a given time-window . The time-window is hardwired to the length of the current month. This means that if a host accesses your server very often, it gets counted only once during the whole month. Only the sum of the unique hosts per month is listed in the statistics report.

    Sessions: Similar to unique sites, this is the number of unique hosts accessing the server during a given time-window. This time-window is one day by default for backward compatibility, but it can be changed with the option -u or the Session directive in the configuration file. For example, if the time-window is two hours, all accesses from a certain host in less than 2 hours after the first access from this host are lumped together into one session. All following accesses more than 2 hours apart from the first access will be counted as a new session. This way you may get an estimated number of how many sessions are started on different sites to access your server.

    1 shown only on the total summary page.
  2. What is the difference between number of hits vs. number of page views on the stats page?
    A Hit:
    #####A hit is any response from the server on behalf of a request sent from a browser. This includes any response from the server, not only text files or documents. If, for example, a HTML page has two images embedded, the server generates three hits if this page is requested: one hit for the HTML page itself and two hits for the two inline images.

    A Pageview:
    #####Pageviews are all files which either have a text file suffix (.html, .text) or which are directory index files. This number allows to estimate the number of "real" documents transmitted by your server. If defined correctly, the analyzer rates text files (documents) as pageviews. Those pageviews do not include images, CGI scripts, Java applets or any other HTML objects except all files ending with one of the pre-defined pageview suffixes, such as .html or .text.
  3. What do you mean by transfer being 5000mb? What happens when it goes to zero? Does it increase every month?
    Yes, you get 5000 MEGS, that is 5 Gigs per month. Each month that will reset :)

    5 Gigs is a LOT of bandwidth, and 99% of clients never need even close to that amount :)
  4. In the Site Statistics feature of Control Panle, Is the sessions number the one that tells us how many people have looked at our website?
    Yes, it is the number of different times someone has visited your site.
    Other hits recorded are NOT UNIQUE visitors, like if the perons hit your site and then went to their home page, and then came right back to your site... it is still only one UNIQUE visitor :)
  5. Server Disk Space Usage
    Server Disk Space Usage
    To check your server space usage go to your online control panel and it will show your total space usage and transfer usage right on the left hand control panel.
  6. Your Access and Stat Logs
    Your Access and Stat Logs
    You must go to your online control panel, there is an option ON your control panel to install your webstats.
    The web page displayed will contain all of the statistics for your domain for the previous week. The page will also contain a Weekly Reports link which, when accessed, will provide much more detailed statistics including pie charts and graphs. These reports are automatically generated for you once each week and are always stored in the same place for easy comparison.
  7. My domain has the ONLINE CONTROL Panel, how do I view my website STATS ?
    You would login to your control panel and you would CLICK on the
    Site Statistics BUTTON in your control panel :)