Installing and using FWTLogstat2

What is FWTLogstat2?

FWTLogstat2 is a program to analyze log files produced by the Apache Web server software. It can also be used with log files produced by other Web servers as long as they comply with the so-called "Common" format. You must download the log file from your Web server and process it with FWTLogstat2 to obtain statistics relative to the usage of your website. FWTLogstat2 has also an independent functionality: it can delete robots entries from your log file, as well as entries produced by RSS readers and by spammers.

Installation for Windows XP

You can download the program as a ZIP file that can be decompressed using Winzip(R) or other similar program. In Windows Explorer, select "Program Files". Create a new directory by selecting "File>New>Folder". Call it "Free Webmaster Tools" or the name you prefer. Move to this directory the ZIP file that you downloaded and de-compress it. Right click the file "logstat2.exe", and select the option "Create shortcut". Rename the new shortcut to "FWTLogStats2". Drag the shortcut to the desktop.

Installation for Windows Vista and 7

Windows Vista and Windows 7 increase the security controls intended to fight malicious programs like spyware. The "Program Files" directory is no longer available to the standard user, and it is only available to an administrator user by recurring to what they call "elevation". So, to avoid unnecessary problems, I suggest that you create a special folder called, for instance, "Programs", under your user directory. If you are logged on as user "Bob", create a folder "\Bob\Programs" (or the name you want), and follow the instructions given for Windows XP using that directory instead of "Program Files".

Using the program

The program "logstat1.exe" is intended to process log files produced by the Apache Web Server. Directions on how to download these files must be given to you by your hosting provider. Once you have downloaded the log file, double click on the desktop shortcut to open the program. A window named "FWTLogstat2" appears.

As shown in the next picture, you have a menu and four buttons. The buttons or the menu can be used at your wish, so I will refer only to the buttons. You begin by pressing the "Open" button. A standard open dialog will apperar. It will show at the start only files of the type '*.txt'. If your file has other extension, or no extension at all, you can select "All files" in the "Files of type" box. Open your log file.

Next, you can press the "Options" button or select the Options tab, or go ahead and press "Process" to use the default options. The "Options" tab has itself other tabs. Here is the first one.

You can uncheck "Requests" if you only want a summary that, anyway, is always included. If you left it checked, you can chose the type of sorting that you want: by name of document, by number of requests made for each document, or by number of bytes transferred.

The other tabs allow you to set masks that will filter the input, i.e., the log lines. The second tab lets you set up a filter for the file's dates.

If you click on "Fast start", you can choose among: today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, or last month, in the first box to the right. If you click on "A date", you can write a date in the second box to the right. If you click on "A range of dates", you can enter an initial date in the "Since date" box, and a final date in the "To date" box. Dates must be written using the European format.

The third tab lets you select the day of the week for which you want statistics, that is, Sunday, Monday, etc., or a combination of these.

If you click on "Fast start", you can choose between weekdays (Monday through Friday) and week ends (Saturdays and Mondays) in the first box to the right. If you click on "A day", you can enter a single day using the first three letters of its name (Sun, Mon, etc.) in the box just to the right. If you click on "A range of days", you can enter two days separated by a hyphen in the box to the right of the radio button.

The fourth tab lets you make a selection based on the name of the file requested. You begin by selecting which files include, and then which to omit from the selected ones.

If you leave blank the first box, all files are included. Then you can proceed to say which ones to omit in the second box. You can use wildcards and concatenate more than one file type.

For more information on the options, see the section about "Command line switches".

Next, you press the "Process" button and you can watch your report in the Report tab.

You can resize this window at your pleasure. If you right click the report, you will get a context menu with four options:

• Select all - You may select all the report to have it copied to the clipboard.
• Copy - Copy the selected text to the clipboard to paste it on another application.
• Save - Save the report with the name "report.txt" in the same directory of the input file.
• Save as... - Save the report with the name you give in the location that you select.

Ending

You may now end the application by pressing the "Close" button, or you may do another analysis changing some options.

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