Unix installation

 W3PERL 

There are five different ways to install the package. Check which case match your configuration.

  Server Telnet/ssh Cgi-bin Crontab
Local Remote No No Option
FTP Remote No Yes Option
Unprivileged user (without cgi) Local Yes No Option
Webmaster or User - (with cgi) (*) Local Yes Yes Yes
Webmaster (Virtual Web) Local Yes Yes Yes
RPM Local Yes Yes Yes
Ubuntu Local Yes Yes Yes

(*) Default installation with the tarball package.

Here is a short preview of what should be done to install the package. See detailed instructions in the previous links. Five different parts are required :

    1 - Installation

Check first if w3perl have been packaged for your distribution. If not, use the tarball, extract the files and edit the install.pl script to configure the paths (Perl path, CGI dir for W3Perl and W3Perl install dir). Best is to install the package inside the web server root.

Ensure that /resources/admin/ and /config/ are writeable by the server if you want to use the adminstration interface, they should have world permission (chmod 777).

    2 - Protect your admin

Password protect the admin section (/w3perl/admin/), this is the place where you will manage your stats. If php is available, you can also edit the /admin/pass.txt file to add a list of allowed IP

    3 - Plugins

You can install some plugins if you want extra stats as user's screensize, heatmap, city ...
Screensize and heatmap require few lines of javacsript to be included in some of your web files.
IP mapping (allowing IP mapping to country code without using the slow reverse dns), city and emails reports require Perl modules to be installed.
PDF export need an extra program to be downloaded and installed.

    4 - Create a configuration file

The package require a configuration file to custom your reports. This file have informations about your output and how you want to parse the logfiles.
Configuration files can be made via an administration interface using http://127.0.0.1/w3perl/admin/, manually if you don't have access to a cgi-bin directory or using the w3perl online tool.

    5 - Initialisation

Launch the main script cron-pages.pl to check your configuration file is fine and make some adjustements if needed. To get faster, use '-d' flag to load only few logfiles.
When ready, all stats can be done by running one master script ('cron-w3perl.pl -a' to init / 'cron-w3perl.pl -e' to update)

    6 - Updating

Add an entry in your crontab to compute stats each night. All you need to do later is to watch the results in your browser each morning (Email report can be sent also)

    7 - Greetings

At last, if you are happy with this piece of software, tell me you're using w3perl. When you let me know you are using w3perl, you help me justify the time spent in maintaining and improving it. If the results are publicly visible on the web, a URL is a wonderful thing to receive, but if it's not a publicly visible project, a simple note is just as welcome.


See the FAQ and bug report if something's wrong.
If you have any trouble when installing the package, send me an email about what's wrong or best post a message in the forum. Try to be as much precise as you can.