| eKstreme.com PHPCounter VII | ||
Back to the general help page.
PHPCounter comes a set of data analysis 'plugins' that give a thorough analysis of your log files. These so-called 'Core Plugins' are:
Their names are suggestive of what they do. We will now look at each one individually to explore the kind of analysis you can do with PHPCounter. There is a lot to explain, but it is all easy. The best thing for you to do to learn about what PHPCounter does for you is to read this help file at least once, and then use the analysis plugins. Using the plugins is straightforward, but the amount of data they give you can be daunting. This help file is meant to give you a means of getting to grips with what it all means!
However, before we dive in, something needs to be explained...
Since PHPCounter defines Epochs and automatically stores each Epoch's data, the Core Plugins are designed to look up all of the available data, both current and past, and subject it to their analysis. This means, that as long as you keep a copy of your log files somewhere, you can always come back to it and analyse it with the Core Plugins.
By default, all Core Plugins analyse the data from the current Epoch. To analyse another Epoch, there is the Previous Epochs Core Plugin that allows you to choose which Epoch you want to analyse: It displays a list of the log files it finds. Once you choose an Epoch, all other Core Plugins detect this choice and analyse it for you.
To avoid confusion, every Core Plugin tells you which Epoch it is analysing. Further, there is a quick link always available to switch back to the current Epoch.
All Hits displays for you all of the hits your website has received. By default, it displays the current Epoch's hits, but can display any Epoch's data. It displays this information in reverse order - i.e., most recent hits first. The information is shows is:
Note that for a very large log file (as would happen on a popular site), All Hits can take a while to load!
Last 10 Hits (LTH) displays only the last ten hits in the log file. By default, it displays the last ten hits in the current Epoch, but can display the last ten hits in any Epoch.
Other than that, LTH is identical to All Hits, and displays the same information.
Page Counts displays a list of each page that is tracked and tells you how many requests were made for that page. By default, it works with the current Epoch, but can analyse any other Epoch's data.
For each page, Page Counts displays the absolute count (number) of hits and what percentage of the total hits this page represents. For the current epoch, Page Counts also displays the Hits Per Day (HPD) for that page.
Finally, there is a 'Filter' link next to each page cout. This is a link to the Filter Core Plugin (see below) to show you the log data for this particular page. The format of this filter is the same as the All Hits and Last 10 Hits Core Plugins (see above.)
Browsers analyses the log files to find out which web browsers your visitors are using. It can recognise 26 different browsers and their versions!
By default, Browsers analyses the current Epoch's data, but can analyse any other Epoch's data. It displays the information as a table of number of each browser.
Operating Systems detects which operating systems your visitors. It can recogise 24 different operating systems and their versions! It then displays a list of counts for each detected operating system. It also displays the percentage of Windows users and the percentage of non-Windows users.
Operating Systems is designed to analyse the current Epoch's data by default, but can analyse any other Epoch's data.
Countries analyses the PHPCounter files to find out which countries the visitors come from. It then displays the list, in descending order, in a table.
The way it does that is by finding the Top Level Domain, or TLD, of each visitors domain. Each country has a sepcific TLD, and thus PHPCounter is able to figure out which country the visitor comes from.
The TLDs that are not counted as countries (because they do not point to a particular country) are: .com, .net, .org, .info, and others. Please see the IANA links below for more information.
The TLDs .mil, .edu, and .gov are counted as USA domains.
The TLD to Country database is derived from the list found at the IANA ccTLD List. The generic TLD database is derived from the IANA gTLD List. This means that PHPCounter can detect all countries with a registered TLD in the world, which is (as of December 2003) 243 countries!
The Filter Plugin allows you to search and filter your log file data using text searches.
The search is case insensitive, and will match an entry if ALL filters are matched (i.e., think of the filters as connected with an 'AND').
You do this by setting 'filters'. You can set a filter for each of the pieces of information that PHPCounter stores. They do NOT need to be exact matches; they can be partial strings.
There are search filters for every piece of information that PHPCounter stores.
Note that by definition, if you do not enter any filters, the Filter Plugin will display all of the hits, which is identical to the All Hits Core Plugin output.
We will now look at some examples to show you what you can do the Filter Plugin.
Suppose you want to know how many visitors you got during December 2003. Go to the Filter Plugin, and type in the 'Date Filter' the following: dec-2003. This will find all hits that occured during December 2003.
[Note: For this to work properly, your log file needs to be longer than the month of December. Otherwise, you will only get a partial list of the December hits.]
How many visitors did you get on April 1st?
In the Date Filter, type in 01-apr-2003.
Let us take a more interesting example. Suppose you want to find out how many visitors came to your website today by clicking on a link on another web page.
For this, we are going to use two filters at the same time. For the sake of this example, suppose that the refereing web page's URL is http://ekstreme.com/phplabs/phpcounter.php, and that today is January 2, 2005. In the Referer Filter, type in http://ekstreme.com/phplabs/phpcounter.php, and in the Date Filter, type in 02-jan-2005. Click on the Filter button to see the hits!
Suppose you have a Mac-specific page; for example, it is the download page of a Mac-only program. How many visitors that visit this page are using Windows?
Again we have to use two filters; suppose that the Mac-specific page's URL is http://ekstreme.com/mac.php. In the Actual URL Filter, type in /mac.php, and in the User-agent Filter, type in Windows. It would be useful if you compare this to the number of Mac users visiting the page: Instead of searching for Windows, search for Mac in the User-agent Filter.