AWStats is a short for Advanced Web Statistics. It's a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced web (but also ftp or mail) server statistics, graphically.
This log analyzer works as a CGI or from command line
and shows you all possible information your log contains, in few graphical web pages.
It uses a partial information file to be able to process large log files, often and quickly.
It can analyze log files from IIS (W3C log format), Apache log files (NCSA combined/XLF/ELF log format or common/CLF log format),
WebStar and most of all web, proxy, wap, streaming servers (and ftp servers or mail logs).
Take a look at this comparison table for an idea on differences between most famous statistics tools for each features (AWStats, Analog, Webalizer,...).
AWStats is a free software distributed under the GNU General Public License. You can have a look at this license chart to know what you can/can't do.
As AWStats works from the command line but also as a CGI, it can work with major web hosting provider that allows CGI and log access.
Features A full log analysis enables AWStats to show you the following information:
* Number of visits, and number of unique visitors,
* Visits duration and last visits,
* Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits,
* Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week),
* Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected),
* Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list,
* Most viewed, entry and exit pages,
* Files type,
* Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate),
* Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version, 89 browsers: Web, Wap, Media browsers...),
* OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 34 OS detected),
* Visits of robots (310 robots detected),
* Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 109 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc...),
* HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, ...),
* Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose,
* Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
* Number of times your site is "added to favourites bookmarks".
* Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
* Cluster report for load balanced servers ratio.
AWStats also supports the following features:
* Can analyze a lot of log formats: Apache NCSA combined log files (XLF/ELF) or common (CLF), IIS log files (W3C),
WebStar native log files and other web, proxy, wap or streaming servers log files (but also ftp or mail log files). See AWStats F.A.Q. for examples.
* Works from command line and from a browser as a CGI (with dynamic filters capabilities for some charts),
* Update of statistics can be made from a web browser and not only from your scheduler,
* Unlimited log file size, support split log files (load balancing system),
* Support 'nearly sorted' log files even for entry and exit pages,
* Reverse DNS lookup before or during analysis, support DNS cache files,
* Country detection from IP location (geoip) or domain name.
* WhoIS links,
* A lot of options/filters and plugins can be used,
* Multi-named web sites supported (virtual servers, great for web-hosting providers),
* Cross Site Scripting Attacks protection,
* Several languages. See AWStats F.A.Q. for full list.
* No need of rare perl libraries. All basic perl interpreters can make AWStats working,
* Dynamic reports as CGI output.
* Static reports in one or framed HTML/XHTML pages, experimental PDF export,
* Look and colors can match your site design, can use CSS,
* Help and tooltips on HTML reported pages,
* Easy to use (Just one configuration file to edit),
* Analysis database can be stored in XML format for XSLT processing,
* A Webmin module,
* Absolutely free (even for web hosting providers), with sources (GNU General Public License),
* Available on all platforms,
* AWStats has a XML Portable Application Description.
Requirements:
To use AWStats, you need the following requirements:
* Your server must log web access in a log file you can read.
* You must be able to run perl scripts (.pl files) from command line and/or as CGI.
If not, you can solve this by downloading last Perl version at ActivePerl (Win32) or Perl.com (Unix/Linux/Other).
See AWStats F.A.Q. to have examples of supported OS and Web servers.
