Reading Your Server Stats - Uniques, Reloads, Request And More.

By now you have hopefully progressed from free hosting to your first paid hosting account at one of the reputable hosting companies the adult industry has to offer and, with this new step in your businesses development you will need to know how to properly read and understand the stats package that your host has hopefully installed on your server. This is what we will take a look at in this article.

Server Stats - The Basics.

one of the most frequently used types of stats is the analogue stats program and, most hosts will initially start you off with some form of analogue stats program to allow you to read your server statistics as such, this is what we will primarily focus on in this article.. analogue stats and what each heading means so on with our stats heading definitions.

Page Requests.

This section in your analogue stats program details the number of 'web pages' (see below) requested from your server.

Requests.

This details the number of individual requests for all files (graphics, scripts, html etc) located on your server or domain name.

Web Pages.

A web page is generally defined as any file that ends with the following extensions; .html, .shtml, .htm, .pl, .php, .asp, .pdf, .cfm and also root or subdirectory request with no file name such as /directory/.

Web Site.

This is representative of any specific directory on your server or domain name an example of this is the directory where this article may reside /articles/ which also has several other articles contained within it, this is one of the reasons why you should try to keep sub directories as relevant as possible so you know that if you are seeing a lot of requests for the /content/ directory your images are being viewed highly.

Time Period (Reports).

This will vary from host to host however, generally speaking the time period of your analogue stats will be either hourly, daily, weekly or monthly and, in some instances, this may also be yearly. usually you will find that you can choose the time period which you wish to view your server stats for. See the bottom of this article for more information on reports.

Successful Requests.

This represents the amount of successful requests made to the various files on your server or domain name that the server was able to give to the surfer hitting your site.

Successful Requests For Pages.

As with the section above this also details the amount of successful requests that your server has given your end users however this time it details the amount of successful pages returned to them.

Failed Requests.

This section of your analogue stats program deals with the amount of files that your surfer requested from your site that the server was unable to supply to the user.

Redirected Requests.

This represents the amount of requests for files which the server had to redirect the end user t for example, if they types in domain.com/directory/ and the surfer was directed to an index page.

Distinct Files Requested.

This deals with the amount of individual distinct file requests from the server for example, index.html and image.gif would be counted as 2 distinct file requests.

Distinct Hosts Served.

This represents the number of distinct machines (pcs or ip addresses) that connected to your domain or server.

Data Transferred.

This will show you how much data (or bandwidth) that your server utilized during any given time frame.

Weekly Report.

This shows you the total amount of requests and page requests for each week the report spans. usually each week will begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday however, you should check with your host if this is the case or not as sometimes this will be different from host to host.

Daily Summary.

This will report the amount of requests and page requests on a day to day basis throughout the week or days of the week contained within your daily summary report. This can be helpful to find out which days your sites are attracting the most traffic off the web.

Hourly Summary.

As you may expect by now, this report will show you the amount of requests and page requests for each hour of the day of days in which you ant to run a report for. As with the daily summary above this is helpful so you know which hours of the day you are getting the most traffic to your sites on.

Domain Report.

Displays the total page requests for each domain. Not all top level domains are expanded by default however so you may have to ask your host to enable the following domains report expansion on your server .net, .gov, .edu and, .ca.

Server Side Stats - An Overview.

As you can see from the above there is a lot of information your server side stats can give you with an analogue stats program however, how you ultimately use this information and read the stats presented to you is down to you but, at least now you will have a better understanding of what each of the headings in your analogue stats program will mean.

Article written by Lee.
http://www.adult-hosting-companies.com