how does a website log look like?

Website Log

[neh2008]

Hi all,

I have worked with Webtrends, the log analyzer, its been a while when i played with it last time.

but I want to know more about how it actually works and how does the WEBSITE LOG look like.

What are the basics....

Please help.

Thank you.

[unknownsoldier]

Log file analyers work by filtering / parsing the files to extract / summarise the data.

Log files generally contain:

date
time
username
sitename
computername
ip
port
method
url-stem
url-query
time-taken
host
Referer

Below is an example of one line of a log file:

2001-12-15 00:08:30 74.122.28.161 - W3SVC5 yadda5 197.113.27.148 80 GET /just.css - 200 0 2776 386 138 HTTP/1.1 www.yadda.net Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+5.5;+Windows+98) ASPSESSIONIDQQGQQVGK=ONDFJNMCGCAOPLIGDEBPKLME [yadda5.net...]

US

[cornwall]

how does the WEBSITE LOG look like

If you are using Webtrends or any other lof file analyser, then you have presumably downloaded the log files off your server onto your PC.

Simplist thing to do is open one and look at it ;) They may well be compressed .gz files when downloaded.

Alternative is to find where on your server the logs are located, and read them there "live" as it were

[neh2008]

That's what it was at that time, a .gz compressed file.

I was a junior Webmaster and did not worry much about looking at it :(

Now, I am learning SEO and think that could have helped me.

Well, better late.

Thank you folks for your support.