Recording/Reporting Tool Needed - Suggestions?

[lifegard2]

We are in the process of implementing a new website. The site itself is relatively small, only about 5 pages. We need the ability to:

1. Track the number of visits to the main page. No big deal, IIS 4.0 can handle this easily.

2. Track the number of clicks sent to two particular links on the main page, one of these links goes to another page in the same site and the other link goes to another of our websites.

3. Track the number of requests sent to an MS Access DB via a drop down box. Specifically, I need to know how many times each item on the drop down box has been selected.

4. Track the number of times a certain PDF file is downloaded. No big deal, IIS 4.0 can do this already.

5. Track the number of times a visitor prints a given page.

Does anyone know of a software package out that can do this? I have looked at WebTrends, but all they say on their web site is how great they are, not what they can do. I've seen a few other ASP solutions that also look workable but daunting to configure for use in my environment. I really need some sort of inexpensive and ready solution that I can implement in a day or two without a great deal of brain work. TIA!

 

[michaylukr]

Webalizer can do everything that you're looking for and it's free. It will need a little time to setup, but I'll bet the setup costs will be less than Webtrends (and you'll have to spend time setting Webtrends up too).

Here's the link:

http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

 

[lifegard2]

How can it track the number of times a link is clicked? From what I can tell, it just reads the same data from the log files that all the other analyzers do. From what I can tell, the log files can't record when a user clicks on a specific link.

I just tried installing it and it locked up my web server hard as a rock. Unfortunately I have to wait to reboot until after production hours. Weird thing is, it still responds to network requests, but web browsing to the pages it hosts is halted and the screen is locked up too. Weird.

Any ideas on how to get webalyzer to record when a user clicks on a specific link on my site?

 

[michaylukr]

To get it to track individual links, you have to modify the Webalizer config. I'm sorry that I don't recall exactly how to do it, but I do know that it is possible as we did exactly this with the product. Everything we did with Webalizer we figured out through the documentation. As for it locking up your webserver, I would not have installed it to that machine as any web traffic reporting tool is processor-intensive and is probably best living on it's own machine.

 

[johnny99]

We use WebTrends. It does the job, but best of all, except the installation everything is handled by marketing them self. And marketing loves it.

/johnny

 

[johnny99]

I forgot the link:

http://www.netiq.com/webtrends/default.asp

/johnny

 

[lifegard2]

Thanks. I think I am going to try their WebTrendsLive service. I looked at webalyzer. I don't think it can do all that I need it to do without a great deal of tweaking and scouring the web over for documentation.

The other alternative, gulp, is to import the logs into access and create the reports they want. Unfortunately this requires much intervention on my part to get the logs, clean them for import, and then import into Access. Ahhhh, the work of an IT guy is never done! If anything, job security. . .