best stats prog?

[dougie]

Can anyone give their opinions on good stats programs? I'm interested in ones that don't have any of their advertising on your site and are fairly in-depth, including where thay was referred from etc.

Any ideas?

[ThomasB]

Are you looking for a program running on your server or for a stats service?

[dougie]

I've only got my website hosted with a web host, so do you mean on their server? Sorry, been doing web stuff for nearly 3 years, but this bits new to me.

[ThomasB]

There are basically 2 ways:
You run the stats program on your server (a scripting language like PHP is needed mostly)
You use a stats program provided by a third party. Searching for "counter service" or sth like that should help you.

[dougie]

Many thanks for that, looks like I'll go the third party route. I'll do some searching on that.

Obviously personal recco's are best - anyone here vouch for a particularly good stats prog?

Dougie.

[Global Wayne]

If your looking for open source at CGI level try AWstats!
Third party html and go - Extreme Tracking...

/Wayne

[dougie]

Many thanks Wayne. Oner thing, when you say CGI, I don't know what you mean - does it mean that I have to do some sort of programming?

Dougie.

[operafan]

Doughie, there's 2 type of stats program that ppl prefer, 1 that runs of your desktop, the other set on your server and runs automatically.

The easiest & fastest to set up & see the referrals is to try a software package that resides on your desktop & crunches the log files that you ask them too & it will output usually in html format, nice graphs & all.
The later, unless you know how to set it up on your server, you'll need to do some reading to configure.
Nowadays most host comes with some stats program installed from the site manager waiting for you to activate it.
To have a list of sites/programs to try head on to
[dmoz.org...]

[Mardi_Gras]

Dougie - if you are new to tracking, be sure to check out this thread, which will give you insight into some of the challenges inherent in the process:

[webmasterworld.com...]

As to what people here use, there are over 160 messages in this thread on that very topic:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Hope this helps.

[dougie]

Many thanks for that, I'll take a look.
What 3rd party stats do some of you reccomend?

[irotte]

I currently use FastStats Analyzer since 6 months. It do all what i need easelay and at a very cheap price. If you don't want to spend more time on free or open license softwares use this one. But like others says, there's a lot of good free programs availables.

[ReliableSol]

My preference is PPHLOGGER which runs on your web hosts server. It is full featured and provides oodles of good information in a easy to use format.

I am so impressed with it, that I am thinking of offering it to my hosing customers as a low cost service, which is something that the script makes it easy to do.

Best available that I know of, for a free script.

Kerry

[nvision]

Hi dougie, a modest but decent one is also Webalizer. Free and you can configure to a certain extent. Gives basic visitor info, referrals, keywords/phrases and countries.

Have fun tracking :)

:: nvision

[dougie]

Many thanks to you all for the input - much appreciated.

One curious thing - how do webalizer make their money?

Dougie.

[dougie]

Many, many thanks for all the helpful input here.

Just downloaded the awstats from here :

awstats.sourceforge.net but it's not very clear what to do next, there doesn't seem to be an .exe file in the zip file - can anyone let me know what to do please?

Any help appreciated.

Dougie.

[operafan]

Awstats for the server site,unless you have on on your local desktop, but quite hard to config.
For a newbie, try a taste of more straight forward .exe donwload & see how it works.
I recommend for newbies 123loganalyzer , it's against TOS to post url - just do the keyword search & you'll find it or maybe urchin which is more techie.

[creative craig]

I have to say awstats as well, I have only been using it 2 months or so, but I like it.

Craig