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This tutorial will walk you through the process of setting up and generating your first project. FastStats Analyzer provides a large number of analysis capabilities to help you optimize your site, tune your promotions, measure partnership effectiveness, and more. Setting up is fairly easy, too!
The hardest part of getting started is figuring out how to access your log file data. You may have to work with your web host, IT office, ISP, or service provider (whoever maintains your web server) to get that information. Analyzer uses standard methods to retrieve files via FTP and HTTP, and if you are not familiar with the terms used in setup here, your web host can tell you what to enter in the appropriate places.
1. Start Analyzer by clicking Start, Programs, Mach5 Analyzer, and then choose the M5 Analyzer programs.
2. The Project Chooser will appear. It contains a Sample Project. Click New Project to begin the process of setting up a new project. Follow the steps, outlined on the left side of the new project setup wizard.
3. Project Name Enter a name for your project along with a description. The name will show up in the Project Chooser along with the description. Click Next>
4. Site Information Enter the local domain for your website. Usually this is the root domain, such as mach5.com instead of www.mach5.com. Enter the default page that gets loaded on any directory access to your site (such as http://mach5.com/products/ with no filename on the URL.) This is usually index.html or if you are using FrontPage usually index.htm. If your site uses a Visitor ID cookie or session ID cookie, enter that in the Cookie Name field. If your site uses both cookies, enter the Visitor ID cookie name here since that is the stronger of the two. If your site doesn't use cookies, leave this blank. Some visitor reports will be disabled. Click Next>
How will you access your log files? This is the hardest question of all, as it requires a lot of information from your Web Hosting Provider. Most web hosting providers provide log file information via the Internet's FTP protocol. Others make the log file available for access on the Internet. Or, if you host your own web site, your log files may be on your computer's hard drive (or at least available over the Windows network). Also, if you are confident about using the Internet, you can use a FTP client and manually download your log files to your hard drive.
Option: My Web Site is Hosted by a 3rd Party
Most people access their log files via FTP. We recommend that you check your Web Hosting Provider's technical support web site for information on where your log files are and how to get access to them. Otherwise, you should e-mail or telephone your web hosting provider. We have a pre-written message that you can send to your web host's technical support or read to the customer support representative.
I Host My Own Web Site
If you host your own web site, you should read your web server documentation and browse your hard drive. Most log files helpfully end in .log, so you might want to search your hard drive for .log files (only as a last resort though -- there are a lot of other .log files on your system that are not web server log files).
Depending on what your web hosting provider or system administrator tells you, there are three ways to access your log files:
This is the easiest method to configure.
5. Log Location Select The log files are stored locally and click Next.
6. Logs (Local) There are three ways to configure Analyzer:
The logs are stored in one file This is the simplest option. It means that your logs are stored in only one file on your hard drive. Click Browse and select this file.
The logs are stored in an entire directory Use this option if you have an entire directory on your disk for your log files. Some web servers have a "logs" directory where they store all of their log files. Choose Browse and select the directory you wish to analyze.
If you enable this option, you may have some non-log files stored in the directory you specify. Analyzer will parse all files in all subdirectories of the directory you specify. You should make sure Analyzer avoids trying to parse through any files that aren't log files, but if Analyzer does encounter such files, they will be skipped. Still, this will slow your analysis. You should use the next option, wildcards, in this case.
Parse all logs that match this wildcard You can tell Analyzer to analyze all log files that match a specific pattern. They are an extremely powerful way to include log files.
Click Next>
5. Log Location Select The log files are stored on an FTP site and click Next.
You should be armed with the information you obtained from your web hosting provider or system administrator. Namely, you should have the FTP site name, the username, the password, and the path to the log files you will be analyzing.
5a. FTP Options Enter in the FTP site name, and your username and password. Most likely you will use the default port (21).Click Next>
6. Logs (FTP) You now need to tell Analyzer where on the FTP server to retrieve your log files. This is a somewhat technical point, but it is very important. If you put a slash before the path to the log file (i.e. /user/mach5/logs/), the path will be an absolute path -- when the server is changing to that directory, it will start from the root of the server. If you do not include a slash, the path is relative to the current directory. If you have ever logged into your web site via FTP, the current directory is the directory you started in. Paths entered relative to the current directory are very short and easy to write (i.e. logs/). If your web hosting provider's technical support says "look in the logs directory", you should assume that it is a relative and do not include a slash before it.
The logs are stored in one file This is the simplest option. It means that your logs are stored in only one file on the FTP server.
The logs are stored in an entire directory Use this option if you have an entire directory on your disk for your log files. Some web servers have a "logs" directory where they store all of their log files. Choose Browse and select the directory you wish to analyze.
This option is somewhat dangerous if you have a very large non-log files stored in the directory you specify. Analyzer will download that file and attempt to analyze it. Note: unlike with local directories, Analyzer will not explore all subdirectories of the directory you specify.
Parse all logs that match this wildcard You can tell Analyzer to analyze all log files that match a specific pattern. They are an extremely powerful way to include log files.
Click Next
You should be armed with the information you obtained from your web hosting provider or system administrator. Namely, you should have the URL to your log file, and, if you need them, the username and password to access that file.
5. Log Location Select The log files are stored on a web server and Click Next> .
6. Logs (Web). Enter in the URL to your log file, and, if needed, check My log is password protected and enter in your username and password. Click Next>
Options for obtaining log files for web are the same as for FTP above.
7. Filters FastStats Analyzer has a powerful filtering feature that lets you include only certain information in your Analyzer report. For example, you can restrict the analysis to a specific range of dates, or analyze the traffic patterns of people who use an Internet Exporer browser. We have prepared a Analyzer filter tutorial, but right away you may want to just filter out search engine spiders. Click the "Add" button to add a filter. Set up an Exclude Filter. And choose Quick Filter for all Search Engine Spiders. Click Next>8. File Tracking Analyzer can track a file or directory over the duration of the analysis period. Analyzer does provide hit statistics on every file or directory, but adding the filename or directory to the tracking option gives you additional information on that resource's popularity over time. Click Add and read the instructions there. One note: while you can track requests for the index page of a directory by tracking /directory/index.html, you can use wildcards and track request for the entire directory by tracking /directory/*. Enter the filename, directory, or wildcard to track and click Ok. When you are finished adding files or directories to track, Click Next>
9. Scenarios Analyzer lets you track progress from one stage in your site to another. For the purposes of setting up your first project, you may wish to skip this feature, but please read up on it more later. It lets you measure the effectiveness of website changes and provides great assistance in measuring return on investment for promotions, in addition to helping to measure the effectiveness of your site at driving visitors toward a certain goal. Click Next>
10. Tag Information. Analyzer provides a HyperLink TreeView which shows you traffic flow aggregated through your website. You can set up tags for TreeView pages to see eventual progress towards a goal or from a specific referrer or entry page. You can set that up later.
11. Export. Analyzer can export your report to HTML and automatically uplaod it to your website via FTP or save it to your hard drive. Note that you can export your report even after the report is generated (click Report and then Export). If you want Analyzer to export your report, place a check next to Automatically Export Report and then click the Export Options button. Follow the steps of the Export Options wizard, and click Help if you have any questions. Click Next>
You're done! Select the project you want to run and then click Generate Report. And if you have any questions, contact us through our website!