Problem
A client had wanted Google Analytics on their site a few months back so they asked me to put it in their website. I thought I had, and I did, locally, but for one reason or another, it was not on the server. The client depends on this report to get funding so I needed a way to get some type of statistics for the past few months.
Solution
GoDaddy, where the website is hosted, offers Statistics on traffic for free. However, you need to enable this for it to start tracking. Searching high and low I wanted to get access to the Apache Logs so I could use a tool like AWStats. Through google I found GoDaddy’s help and saw that you can see Apache Logs in your FTP File Manager. So I downloaded it.
A friend ran across Weblog Expert as I was retrieving the files. I decided to try it since my last memory of AWStats was spending hours trying to find the right paths to enter into the config file. Weblog Expert Lite is free and contains enough features for me to use.
I downloaded Weblog Expert Lite, installed it (it is a client installed on your local PC), created a new profile, selected the folder with all the downloaded logs. Presto! the reports were created and I was out of hot water. So much simpler than AWStats.