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What's a Web Path Analyzer? It's a tool used by administrators of web
servers that wish to see how people are browsing the web site. Web Path
Analyzer will read IIS log files, which are the web servers log files, and
it will graph an image showing what pages people visit, and how they go
about doing that.
Here's a sample -
What can we learn from that sample -
- It was run against the 2003-08 log (ex0303.log), and this was an all
day/night sample (00:20 - 22:58).
- It actually had a filter set to exclude most of the web site
(thereby simplifying this picture)
- There were 21 web journeys (the continue timeout was set to 5
minutes), and in that time, 3 unique IP numbers were detected visiting
14 different pages.
- You can see the directory and file fan-out shown as the gray bands
connecting from parent folders to child folders
- You can see the individual journeys and how they progressed.
- Each journey had its number enabled as well, so you see where they
started and how they proceeded.
This is a great analysis tool to review how your site is being used and where
there may be bottlenecks.
Interested?
If you're interested in this as a solution to a problem you have, here's how
to install it. First, the disclaimer -
You are on your own. If you don't know what you're
doing, it is indeed possible to overwrite files and generally mess up your
computer.
Prerequisites
- Installed and operational web server
- Perl installed and configured to serve CGIs from your web
- GD module in Perl
Download the Perl Script and the sample configuration file
Anal.zip
Containing:
Anal.pl
Configure the Script
The Script has a couple of configuration options. Each should be reasonably
self-explanatory, and they are at the top of the file. Perl scripts are
delivered in source format, so you can just edit it with Notepad.
The only options are to tell this script where your IIS Log Files are
stored, so it can find them to analyze.
License Agreement
This program is Webware. You may install it, test it for a reasonable
period of time, and even modify it, but if you elect to keep it in use,
whether in original form or in a modified form, you are then obligated to pay
on a scale based on the value you receive from it. You are not allowed to
redistribute any modified copy.
As with other license agreement, this program is supplied as is, and is not
guaranteed free from defects. You assume all risk for problems you may incur
as a result of the use of this program.
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