Configuring AWStats for subdirectories | arfore dot com

AWStats is a great open-source stats analyzation program.

In the process of setting up a replacement webserver at VSU I was investigating the replacement of analog, another nice open-source stats program.

The problem with analog is that the people requesting stats were confused by the technical output. These people aren’t computer folks, they just want to know who or what or when the pages they maintain are being visited.

The default setup of AWStats is fairly easy to accomplish, but if you want to generate separated stats on individual directories off the web root, then it takes a little know how.

In the configuration file for AWStats, there is a section that allows you to limit the processing to a given set of files. Interestingly enough the variable controlling this is called OnlyFiles. The relevant section of the default configuration file is:

# Include in stats, only accesses to URLs that match one of following entries. # For example, if you want AWStats to filter access to keep only stats that # match a particular string, like a particular directory, you can add this # directory name in this parameter. # The opposite parameter of “OnlyFiles” is “SkipFiles”. # Note: Use space between each value. This parameter is or not case sensitive # depending on URLNotCaseSensitive parameter. # Note: You can use regular expression values writing value with REGEX[value]. # Change : Effective for new updates only # Example: “REGEX[marketing_directory] REGEX[office\/.*\.(csv|sxw)$]” # Default: “” #

OnlyFiles=””

What you have to do is to change the value to the regular expression that represents you desired subset. For instance if you wanted to limit the stats generation to the directory foobarbaz then the particular string would be:

OnlyFiles=”REGEX[^\/foobarbaz]”

In order to make this work without keeping you from obtaining stats for the entire site as well you will need to duplicate the master configuration file for awstats and alter the entry as stated above. Make sure the provide a unique name for the config file, such as:

awstats.foobarbaz.conf

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