new to reporting, need examples

[lschafroth]

I am using Webtrends 7 to create reports for my new site. I'm new to html and reporting.

Does anyone have any tutorials, or profiles already configured with Webtrends I can use as a guideline?

I'm not evan sure what I should be tracking and how to save the reports. Daily, weekly, monthly?

When I tried to create a html report for one day it said 3/12/05 through 3/18/05 and created about 30 files in the stats folder. It's looks quite messy.

What settings should I have checked in IIS 6 for logging?

Thanks!

LS

[lschafroth]

Hello?

[bcolflesh]

Have you worked through all the tutorials and docs in their Resource Center?

[webtrends.com...]

[lschafroth]

I started going through it this last weekend. I was just wondering if anyone had any good sample profiles I could use to see what they were doing.

Thanks!

LS

[cgrantski]

Activate all logging elements in IIS 6 EXCEPT for Process Accounting which should be completely turned off. You won't need every single one but it does not harm to have them all turned on (EXCEPT for Process Accounting, very important!)

Have the logs roll over daily (the default) and consider storing your logs on the D or E drive rather than C, if C is short of room.

It kind of sounds like you are using WebTrends Log Analyzer 7 or WebTrends Analysis Suite 7 or one of the older products? WT 7 (the current one) doesn't really have the concept of "saving reports" and HTML reports involve an export, so these 2 comments of yours are making me think "older version."

HTML reports are "messy" because each graph and graphic element is a file, each report is a file, and so forth.

[lschafroth]

Yes, I am using Version 7.0c.

When I set the extended logging options, there was no Process Accounting option available.

LS

[lschafroth]

This is a version we've had lying around a while. WOuld I be better of using AWStats or something else instead? I can't say I like WT very much so far.

LS

[bobdole]

As cgrantski said, the version you have is pretty old stuff, the current version is a completely different beast, all the reports are accessible via a calendar, just click on the day, week, month, etc that you want to view straight from your web browser. The old version requires a bit more forethought on what you want to look at, when you decide you want a differnt time frame, you have to rerun the report. The new version just click the timeframe and its there, no messing with a mass of html files or anything like that. You can grab a trial off the webtrends website if you want.

As for the recommending logging options for IIS as per WebTrends, they are;

# Date (date)
# Time (time)
# Client IP Address (c-ip)
# User Name (cs-username)
# Server Name (s-computername)
# Server IP Address (s-ip)
# Method (cd-method)
# URI Stem (cs-uri-stem)
# URI Query (cs-uri-query)
# Protocol Status (sc-status)
# Bytes Sent (sc-bytes)
# Bytes Received (cs-bytes)
# Time Taken (time-taken)
# Protocol Version (cs-version)
# Host (cs-host)
# User Agent (cs(User-Agent))
# Cookie (cs(Cookie))
# Referer (cs(Referer))

and just to reinforce, if you find the options for process accounting make sure they are off, unless you like to go on fun fill adventures of manually removing process accounting records from your logfiles :) It can cause analysis to straight up abort or give you an incomplete report.

-b