<?xml version="1.0"?>

<!--
 * ========================================================================
 * 
 * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 * 
 * ========================================================================
-->

<document id="webalizer">

  <properties>
    <title>Webalizer</title>
  </properties>

  <body>

    <section title="Webalizer">

      <p>
        Webalizer is an httpd logfile analysis tool, which the Cactus web site
        uses to track website traffic.
      </p>

      <section title="Webalizer Definitions">

        <p>
          From the
          <link href="ftp://ftp.mrunix.net/pub/webalizer/README/">Webalizer
          Readme</link>:
        </p>

        <p>
          <strong>Hits</strong>: Any request made to the server which is
          logged, is considered a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything...
          html pages, graphic images, audio files, CGI scripts, etc... Each
          valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number
          represents the total number of requests that were made to the server
          during the specified report period.
        </p>

        <p>
          <strong>Files</strong>: Some requests made to the server, require
          that the server then send something back to the requesting client,
          such as a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is
          considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The
          relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as
          'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.
        </p>

        <p>
          <strong>Pages</strong>: Pages are, well, pages! Generally, any HTML
          document, or anything that generates an HTML document, would be
          considered a page. This does not include the other stuff that goes
          into a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc... This
          number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, and does not
          include the other 'stuff' that is in the page. What actually
          constitutes a 'page' can vary from server to server. The default
          action is to treat anything with the extension '.htm', '.html' or
          '.cgi' as a page. A lot of sites will probably define other
          extensions, such as '.phtml', '.php3' and '.pl' as pages as well.
          Some people consider this number as the number of 'pure' hits... I'm
          not sure if I totally agree with that viewpoint. Some other programs
          (and people :) refer to this as 'Pageviews'.
        </p>

        <p>
          <strong>Sites</strong>: Each request made to the server comes from
          a unique 'site', which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an
          IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses
          made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This
          DOES NOT mean the number of unique individual users (real people)
          that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs and
          the HTTP protocol (however, this number might be about as close as
          you will get).
        </p>

        <p>
          <strong>Visits</strong>: Whenever a request is made to the server
          from a given IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous
          request by the address is calculated (if any). If the time
          difference is greater than a pre-configured 'visit timeout' value (or
          has never made a request before), it is considered a 'new visit',
          and this total is incremented (both for the site, and the IP
          address). The default timeout value is 30 minutes (can be changed),
          so if a user visits your site at 1:00 in the afternoon, and then
          returns at 3:00, two visits would be registered. Note: in the 'Top
          Sites' table, the visits total should be discounted on 'Grouped'
          records, and thought of as the "Minimum number of visits" that came
          from that grouping instead. Note: Visits only occur on PageType
          requests, that is, for any request whose URL is one of the 'page'
          types defined with the PageType option. Due to the limitation of the
          HTTP protocol, log rotations and other factors, this number should
          not be taken as absolutely accurate, rather, it should be considered
          a pretty close "guess".
        </p>

        <p>
          <strong>KBytes</strong>: The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the
          amount of data, in KB, that was sent out by the server during the
          specified reporting period. This value is generated directly from the
          log file, so it is up to the web server to produce accurate numbers
          in the logs (some web servers do stupid things when it comes to
          reporting the number of bytes). In general, this should be a fairly
          accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server
          had, regardless of the web servers reporting quirks.
        </p>

        <p>
          Note: A kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 :)
        </p>

      </section>

    </section>

  </body>
</document>
