Introduction

Thank you for installing Xlogan. Xlogan is a tool for analysing web site log files. These log files are created as visitors move around your website, and your web host or ISP then makes them available for you to download. You can usually find these log files when you connect to your web server via FTP (if you don't know how to access these log files, please contact your ISP or web host).

Each line in a log file looks something like this:

81.76.185.242 - - [28/Mar/2007:14:55:56 -0600] "GET /index.htm HTTP/1.1" 200 13527 "http://www.google.com/search?q=axe+software" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)"

Xlogan reads these log files and generates statistics for you. These statistics can reveal a lot of useful information about your website, such as which sites are linking to you, what search terms people use to find your site, how often each file is downloaded, what countries visitors come from, and much more.

The following information is in each log line:

IP address

e.g. 81.76.185.242
This is the internet address of the person visiting your website. By counting how many unique IP addresses Xlogan sees, it can tell you how many individual visitors your website received. Xlogan can tell you from which country the user is visiting by checking its built-in IP-to-country database.

Date and time

e.g. 28/Mar/2007:14:55:56 -0600
This is the date and time of the request, including the time zone of the server.

File request

e.g. GET /index.htm
This is the name of the file requested. In this example, the user is requesting the site's main index page index.htm.

Status code

e.g. 200
This tells you whether the request was successful or not. Xlogan uses this information to tell you about any errors visitors saw (e.g. HTTP 404 "File Not Found" or HTTP 500 "Internal Server Error"). It also uses the status code to separate out requests for partial files (usually when download manager software requests a large file). (More information about HTTP status codes)

Bytes transferred

e.g. 13527
This tells you how many bytes were transferred to the user, i.e. the bandwidth used. In this case the index.htm file is 13527 bytes, or about 13K. By adding up all of this information, Xlogan can tell you the total bandwidth used by your site, and it can also tell you the total used for each file and each visitor.

Referrer

e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=axe+software
This tells you where the visitor came from. In this example, the referrer is a Google results page for the query "axe software".

User agent (browser and OS information)

e.g. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)
This gives you information about the web browser and the Operating System that the visitor is using. In this example, the user is running Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP.

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