Forum Moderators: DixonJones
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
Etc. ...
The part after the content/ and before the? (if any) is the page name.
What I'd like to do is get a report on the number of times each of these particular pages is hit without having to create a separate profile filtering everything else out.
The "Top Pages" report is no good because everything else is included in there.
The "URL Parameter Analysis" report is no good because the page names are not represented in the query strings (and sometimes there is no query string).
Anybody else come across this or have any ideas?
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 12:19 am (utc) on Sep. 20, 2004]
[edit reason] Exemplified URLs [/edit]
And what version of WebTrends are you using? WebTrends has evolved so fast it's necessary to know that.
I'm on version 8.1.
The Top Pages report contains all of the pages that I'm looking to monitor and includes view counts for each, which is great. The problem is that the report also includes all other URLs on the site (functional things, form submits, HTML pages and whatnot).
I want to get a report for just /content/ pages.
What I'm looking for is kind of like URL Parameter Analysis, and it would be perfect if my content page was represented in a Query String like ...&content=page1&... but it's represented as .../content/page1
You might be thinking along the lines of do a URL search and replace to convert the /content/ into a?content= but sometimes the page will have a query string of its own along the lines of .../content/page1?open&foo=bar... and sometimes the page name will have an & in it which would indicate the end of the parameter in parameter analysis.
Tricky one maybe ... hopefully I've not made it less clear!
Small sidetrack ... Is it possible to know which order URL Find and Replace will be carried out if there are multiple Find and Replaces assigned to a profile?
I can think of ways to get what you want but all of them involve a compromise of some kind.
The easiest way by far is to just create a separate profile with a hit filter that includes only hits in the /content directory. But you say you don't want a separate profile. (why not, by the way? it won't count against your page limit. End user convenience I assume?)
The next easiest may not be available in 8.1. Can you do custom reports? This is an easy custom report, with Pages as the dimension and the directory as the filter.
Also possible is trying the URL earch and Replace exactly as you mentioned. The URL S&R will change all instances of "/content/" to "/content?page=". Have you actually tried it? I've seen WebTrends cope with all kinds of weirdness in the parameter string, and perhaps a result like "/content?page=page3?option=5" will actually get by. If I were you I'd experiment on a small log, just in case it works, because it will solve your problem (post results here please!).
The one with the most hassle involves a bunch of URL S&R's, possibly one per page. These will involve a series of replacements of "/content/page1" with "/content?page1" and using the "Up To End of String" option. And so forth for /page2, etc. Worst case is that you'll have to create one of these for every unique page, which may be out of the question if you have lots. But if you can find patterns in the strings, you may be able to do them in groups with a minimum of URL Search and Replace statements.
As for your question about the order in which S&Rs are applied ... I guess you know that WT applies only one S&R per log file line, right? And it checks the S&R's in a certain order? And that's what you want to manipulate? Very advanced! I've done this, and I know for sure that they are checked in the order in which they are created. To manipulate the order within an existing set of URL S&R's, the most foolproof way is to delete ones you don't want to happen early and re-create them so they will be at the end of the list. I've tried the alternative of messing with the .ini file that contains the ones already created, and I had very unhappy results for some reason.
The reason for not creating a separate profile is, as you guessed, that the end user wants just one report with everything in it.
Unfortunately, custom reports are only available in the Enterprise Editions and we are stuck with the Advanced Edition.
I reckon I'll experiment with the S&Rs to see if I get the thing massaged properly. There's a large number of individual page names and they're creatable and deletable by the customer so they're not static enough to create an S&R for each. I'll give that a shot and resort back to a separate profile if it doesn't work out.
Thanks for your help!
"As for your question about the order in which S&Rs are applied ... I guess you know that WT applies only one S&R per log file line, right?"
I actually hadn't realised that it only applies one S&R per log file line.
So, if I wanted to remove all occurrances of a certain character, but also wanted to eliminate everything after another character, then that can't be done?
Any way around this snag?
But if you have WT 7, look at the new additional URL operation, which is called URL Rebuilding. Combined with URL S&R, you can get a lot farther than formerly.
I believe that URL Search & Replace is executed before URL Rebuilding.
Can't think of anything. They've gotten a lot of the bugs out and the upcoming 7.1 should go even further in this respect. The admin interface is definitely different so be prepared to spend a little time re-learning. But the migration tool for your existing profiles etc seems to work great.
When you upgrade, ask to be allowed access to their online user groups where you will find a lot of your (upcoming) questions already asked and answered by other users. This (Webmasterworld) forum and that one are the best resources I know of.
