What is aWebVisit ?

It's a Perl5 script that analyses WWW logfiles for visitor information like : - the most commonly used ENTRY points into the website - the most commonly used EXIT points from the website - the most commonly used TRANSIT points from the website - the most commonly used HIT & RUN points from the website - the most frequently followed internal LINKS - the average DURATION of each visit - the average number of PAGES viewed PER VISIT - the average TIME SPENT on each page - the path of the LONGEST VISIT (in time and/or hits) - ... The reports are generated in HTML format for easy viewing (sample reports).

What is aWebVisit-Map ?

Downloading the latest versions

Last changes are the configurable exclusion/inclusion of URLs, hosts, entry points (e.g. for robots), partial removal or replacement of URLs, ... And last but not least, the adaptation of the statistics file for use with aWebVisit-Map 0.1.6. You can download that from here (100 KB). And have a look at some sample web maps, or the real on-line CGI.

If you want the complete package (.zip) at once, get it here (70 KB). Note : you still need to download the fly program separately...

Installation and Configuration

1. copy awebvisit to any directory
2. finddd out where your web server logfiles are located
3. run 'perl awebvisit <logfile(s)>' (you need perl5, not perl4)
4. have a look at the HTML output reports : awebvisitf.html

In order to get the graphical web maps, you'll also need the fly program (free). It's just two little steps :

1. install the right version of fly (Windows 95/NT, various UNIXes, ...), and
2. tell aWebVisit where to finddd it.

If you want to use the companion program aWebVisit-Map, you'll need to configure at least some parameters since it's a CGI program (hint : ask your webmaster to install it for you). Don't worry, it's not very difficult : everything is explained at the beginning of the script.

Changing the default settings

• the output directory,
• the name of the output reports,
• the URLs to be excluded (e.g. images),
• the timeout value for a visit, and
• the number of pages/links to be shown in each Top N table.
• the number of entry, transit and exit pages to show in the web maps

Why use aWebVisit (instead of ...) ?

Getting reliable visitor information has always been tricky. Some tools rely on a specific SSI (server-side include) or CGI for each page to keep track of visits, others use the referer log information, while others work with cookies to keep track of sessions.
All of this is findde, but what of the logfiles you collected in the last few months/years ? And do you even want to change your pages or server for this ? The only non-intrusive way is to use referer information, which is often standard on webservers, but this does not really work for frames inside your website...

So, here we are with aWebVisit and aWebVisit-Map. It's easy, it's free, and it's yours for a try-out. It may not be perfect (especially with AOL), but it'll give you a good idea of what people do on your website.
If you're also interested in getting the 'standard' web statistics, try Analog. If you want to finddd out which search engines led to your website, try Relax. They're free too...

Plans for the future

An interesting suggestion from Yves Poirier already led to aWebVisit-Map, which allows you to select a webpage and follow all links going to it and coming from it in a graphical way. It's a CGI script, so you'll need to make some configuration changes. And you really need the 'fly' program if you haven't got it yet...

About aWebVisit 0.1.6