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Automating Usage Statistics With SimpleSite

Summary

SimpleSite is one of Catalyst's Web Tools. Although SimpleSite is designed primarly to help create and manage Web sites, it can be used exclusively to automate the generation of site usage statistics. To do so, it manages your personal extended_log file, and, on a nightly basis, it runs Webalizer to update your statistics page. (Webalizer is the same Web statistics tool supported by UW Technology.) So, even if you don't use SimpleSite to manage your Web site, you can use it to automate the generation of your usage statistics. Setup takes about two minutes; the instructions for this follow below.

Instructions

  1. Go to the Catalyst Tools page and click Log in to the Catalyst Tools. If this is the first time you have used the Catalyst tools, you will be asked to provide some information about yourself.

  2. Click SimpleSite on the left to enter the SimpleSite area.

  3. In the Available Web Sites section, select the Web site you want to manage. If you do not see the Web site you wish to enable statistics for listed, click Update to refresh your list.

  4. In the Options section, select Manage this Web Sites usage statistics and click Next. You will be taken to the Manage statistics page.

  5. In the Configure statistics section, select Enable my Web statistics generation, indicate whether you want to conserve space by deleting the log file nightly, and then click Update Configuration.

SimpleSite will now manage your site usage statistics, which can be viewed at:

http://host.washington.edu/accountname/webstats/

where host.washington.edu/accountname is your base URL.

The Statistics are updated by SimpleSite overnight, so you must wait 24 hours to see your first day's statistics. No retroactive statistics can be generated because archival log file data is not available.

For further questions about SimpleSite, please refer the Catalyst Web site.

Example Webstats Page

Example Webalizer reports, similar to what you will get from SimpleSite, can be viewed at the Webalizer samples page.