We use AWStats, short for Advanced Web Statistics, is a robust log analyzer that generates comprehensive reports for web, FTP, mail, and streaming server statistics based on detailed server logs. These reports are presented graphically on user-friendly web pages.

Development Background

AWStats was first developed in 1997 and continues to be maintained by its original author, Laurent Destailleur. Since July 2008, however, development has shifted mainly to maintenance fixes and small new features. This shift occurred as Destailleur began dedicating most of his time to leading another significant open-source project, Dolibarr ERP & CRM, and working full-time for TecLib, a French open-source company. Many other developers also contribute by providing patches and packages, especially for Linux distributions like Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Design and Flexibility

AWStats is designed for flexibility, capable of running through a web browser CGI (Common Gateway Interface) or directly from the operating system’s command line. It processes large log files quickly using intermediary database files. AWStats supports both standard and custom log formats, making it compatible with log files from Apache (NCSA combined/XLF/ELF or common/CLF log formats), Microsoft’s IIS (W3C log format), WebStar, and most web, proxy, WAP, streaming media, FTP, and mail servers.

Licensing and Compatibility

AWStats is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPL v3). Its compatibility with all web hosting providers that allow CGI and log access ensures broad usability.

Features

AWStats’ reports cover a broad spectrum of website usage data:
* Number of visits and unique visitors.
* Visit duration and recent visits.
* Authenticated users and their latest visits.
* Usage by month, day of the week, and hour of the day (pages, hits, KB).
* Visitor domains/countries, regions, cities, and ISPs using Maxmind’s proprietary geo databases.
* Host lists, recent visits, and unresolved IP addresses.
* Most viewed, entry, and exit pages.
* Commonly requested file types.
* Web compression statistics (for Apache servers using mod_gzip or mod_deflate).
* Visitor browsers and operating systems, with extensive detection (123 browsers, 45 OS).
* Robot visits, including search engine crawlers (381 robots).
* Download tracking for files like PDFs and compressed files.
* Search engines, keywords, and phrases used to find the site (122 search engines detected, including Yahoo, Google, Altavista).
* HTTP errors (e.g., Page Not Found with latest referrer).
* User-defined reports based on URL, URL parameters, and referrer fields.
* Site additions to bookmarks/favorites.
* Screen size (requires HTML tags on the site’s home page).
* Integrated browser support for Java, Flash, Real G2 player, Quicktime reader, PDF reader, WMA reader (requires HTML tags on the home page).
* Cluster distribution for load-balanced servers.

Additional Capabilities

AWStats also offers:
* Support for a wide range of log formats, including Apache NCSA combined (XLF/ELF) or common (CLF), Microsoft IIS (W3C), WebStar, and various web, proxy, WAP, streaming media, FTP, and mail server logs.
* Command line and CGI-based report generation, with dynamic filter capabilities in CGI mode.
* Scheduling for automatic statistics updates.
* Handling of unlimited log file sizes.
* Log file splitting for load-balanced systems.
* Support for ‘nearly sorted’ log files, including entry and exit pages.
* Reverse DNS lookup before or during analysis, with DNS cache file support.
* IP location-based country detection (geoip) or domain name.
* Plugins for US/Canadian regions, cities, major countries’ regions, ISPs, and organizations (requires third-party geoipregion, geoipcity, geoipisp, and/or geoiporg databases).
* WhoIS lookup links.
* Extensive configurable options, filters, and plugin support.
* Modular design for additional feature inclusion via plugins.
* Support for multi-named websites (virtual servers), ideal for web-hosting providers.
* Cross-site scripting attacks protection.
* Multilingual report availability.
* Basic Perl interpreter compatibility without needing esoteric libraries.
* Dynamic CGI interface reports.
* Static HTML or XHTML reports, with experimental PDF export via third-party software.
* Customizable look and color schemes to match site design, with or without CSS.
* Help and HTML tooltips in reports.
* Easy configuration with directives confined to one file per site.
* XML format storage for analysis databases, facilitating use by external applications like XSLT processing (with an example provided).
* Supplied Webmin module.
* Completely free, with included source code (GNU General Public License).
* Platform-independent functionality with Perl support.
* An XML Portable Application Description.