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Wusage 8.0 Manual
Glossary of Frequently Used Terms
| Term | Definition |
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| accesses | An "access" is a single, successful request made by a web
browser. Every successful request for any resource on the web server,
whether for an image or a document or for another type of
information, is regarded as an access. However, this definition
can be changed through the use of the Allowed Documents (allow) and
Ignored Documents (ignore) options, which can be used to include only
accesses to certain types of resources and to explicitly ignore
accesses to others. The definition of a "successful"
request is determined by the Success Codes (successcodes) option.
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| agents | An "agent," or user agent, is a web browser or other program used to
access your web server. Most user agents are web browsers such as
Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, but a significant
number are automated Internet-indexing programs, such as Altavista.
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| bytes | A "byte" is a single character of information. In the reports
generated by Wusage, the "bytes transferred" figure refers to
the number of characters of information that were sent to the
browser. This is helpful in determining how much of the
web server's connection to the Internet (how much bandwidth)
is currently in use. It is especially useful to site administrators
who pay for bandwidth by the megabyte or gigabyte on a
regular basis.
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| calendar | The Calendar of Reports is a web page which contains links
to all of the reports that have been generated for each individual
epoch, as well as the cumulative summary report. This
is the first page you see upon clicking the View Statistics
button. For more information, see the
Interpreting Wusage Reports section.
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| cookies | "Cookies" are pieces of information which can be stored on the
user's browser, at your web server's request. They are useful because
the web browser submits these cookies back to the server on
future visits. This means that individual users can be recognized
again by assigning a unique "cookie" to each visitor. Wusage recognizes
the presence of such cookies in the format produced by the
Apache web server's mod_usertrack module, and also in the format
produced by the Microsoft IIS 4.0 web server. Beginning in Wusage 8.0,
Wusage deals more gracefully both with servers that log the cookie on the
very first request and with cookies that do not. For more information,
see the Server Configuration Tips section.
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| Downloads | "Downloads" are attempts
to obtain a particular file from your web server. Wusage 8.0 and above
are capable of determining the percentage of download attempts which
were actually successful. This is the "% of Complete Downloads" figure
which you see in reports. This figure is defined as
the percentage of attempted accesses which actually succeeded
in obtaining all components of the document in question,
including images, frames, and so forth. If a page contains 20 images,
and the visitor requests only 15 of them, this counts as an
incomplete download. If all 20 images are requested,
but the program can determine that the images were not completely sent,
this is also an incomplete download. If the user obtains the
page only, and NO components at all are requested, this is considered
a complete download from a text-based browsing device,
indexing agent, web-exploring robot, et cetera. This method is valid because
graphics-capable browsers will virtually always attempt to request at
least one non-text component of the page. The percentage of
complete downloads for an individual image takes into account
instances in which the image should have been requested but was not,
such as a case in which a page containing the image is requested and
that particular image is not requested. If a page is accessed
but none of its components are requested, this does not
count as a failed attempt to obtain each of the components; but if even
one component is requested, this then counts as a failed attempt to obtain each
component that was not requested or completely sent.
| | EML | EML (Email Markup Language) is a simple alternative to HTML.
EML is used to create plain-text email messages. EML tags
are similar to HTML tags, but there are far fewer tags and
the table mechanism is much less complex. For more information,
see Email Markup Language (EML)
.
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| epoch | An epoch is an individual time period for which a report
has been generated. Epochs can be days, weeks, months, quarters,
or years, depending on the Daily Reports (daily), Weekly Reports (weekly),
Monthly Reports (monthly), Quarterly Reports (quarterly) and Annual Reports (annual) settings.
The Summary Reports (summary) report can also be thought of as a single
epoch spanning the entire time range over which the program
has been used.
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| macro | A "macro" is a string which is recognized as a shorthand for another string.
Wusage uses a report macro language to build its reports. These macros
can be rewritten by the user in order to translate or otherwise
customize the reports. See the Report Macro Language
section for more information.
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| query | A Wusage query, or "quick query," is a question which can be answered
by reviewing the data which is preserved by the program for this purpose.
For more information, see the Quick Queries
section.
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| trail | A "trail" is a unique path among the documents on the
web server, followed by one or more visitors to the web server.
Every visit to the web server follows a trail.
Commonly followed trails represent useful information about
the preferred routes that your visitors follow. The most commonly
followed trails, above a minimum length determined by the
Top Trails Report: Minimum Steps (trailminimumsteps) option, are reported
as part of the Chart Top Trails (trails) report.
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| visit | A "visit" consists of one or more accesses made by the same
visitor, with no more than a certain time interval between
accesses. The maximum time interval is termined by the
Max. Minutes Between Accesses (trailtimeout) option.
The identity of the visitor is determined by
combining the authorized user name (when available), HTTP user-identifying
"cookies", site (IP address), operating system, and
web browser identifying information in order to produce
the most unique "key" possible. Any such fields that are
not actually available are not used. In the simplest
case, where the log file does not contain any other
user-identifying information, only the site (IP address)
of the visitor is used. When cookies are present, they
override all other factors.
When the maximum time interval has elapsed, the visit
is considered to be over, and the next access by that
visitor begins a new visit.
8.0 notes regarding visits: Many recently released web
servers log a user-identifying cookie on the very first access, when it
has been set by the server but not returned by the browser.
For privacy reasons, many browsers will never return these
cookies, which caused earlier releases of Wusage to count many
single-access "one-shot" visits. Beginning in Wusage 8.0, "visits"
that appear to consist of only one access are not counted as such.
Instead, the "one-shot" visits are counted and set aside. Wusage computes
the average number of accesses for the remaining, more
meaningful visits, and then divides the number of one-shot
visits by this average figure to arrive at the projected
number of actual visits that these apparent "one-shot" visits
actually represent. In order to arrive at a much more accurate
figure, this proportion is then applied to the visits figures
both for each individual document and for the site as a whole.
Of course, some servers do not log a
user-identifying cookie on the first access. In order to deal
with these cases, when Wusage 8.0 sees a cookie for the first
time, it checks for an active visit in progress with no cookie
and the same user IP address. If such a visit is found, the
cookie and its subsequent accesses are assigned to that visit.
Beginning in Wusage 8.0, a visit that has "timed out" will
not be stitched together again, even if a referring URL
appearing later suggests that the same visit has continued.
This was done both for consistency with reporting standards
and for important performance reasons.
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Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, Boutell.Com, Inc.
wusage@boutell.com
Boutell.Com, Inc - PO Box 16716, Seattle WA, 98116, USA
Phone/Fax +1 206 658-8176
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