Yowzers! Web development can sure suck up gobs of time! I set out this past weekend to install AWStats, a popular web statistics analysis package. It was supposed to be a relatively straightforward affair. Suffice it to say that it took a bit longer than I expected (surprise, surprise!). After encountering several issues, consulting with my personal computer guru, and doing a fair share of Googling, I was finally able to figure things out and get things working.

I had saved all my log files since RohJuh’s inception back in 2001, but unfortunately, it wasn’t until December of last year (2005) that I realized my web server had been recording its logs in a less-than-optimal format. I had been recording things in the Apache “common” format which is the default setting in OS X. The common format records rudimentary things like page visits and IP numbers, but that info is not very interesting. The “combined” format is where it’s at. It records things like the visitor’s operating system and browser, which hits are from robots/spiders, where people are coming to the site from, and other interesting info. The nice thing is that AWStats can generate a report combining each format, although you have to make sure you go through the extra step of processing each format separately.

Now that I can view the site stats in a clear and graphical way, I’m embarrassed to find that the audience of RohJuh is not as technically sophisticated as I had thought. A whopping 48% of RohJuh’s visitors are using the wretched MS Internet Explorer. Quite ghastly indeed! Maybe a better way to look at things, the glass half full approach, is to note that 48% is far lower than the latest reported IE marketshare of 85%.

You may be asking what’s the point of all this? Why waste, errrr… spend, the time to install this stuff? After all, why does a rinky-dink site like RohJuh.com need a fancy web statistics analysis tool anyway? The answer? Because I can. Ha! C’mon, since when have geeks needed good reasons to do geeky things?

Anyhow, here are the stats. I’ll also be putting a link to them in the “about” section.

Posted by Roger at 10:26 pm.