Before the whole run


SECURITY
- Protect this w3perl admin directory

It will avoid people having accesses to your configuration files.

- If PHP is enable, you can use the /admin/pass.txt file to add a list of allowed hosts.

- If not, you can create an .htaccess file in the w3perl's admin directory (<install_path>) with the following lines :

AuthUserFile /<install_path>/w3perl/admin/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "restricted access for w3perl admin"
AuthType Basic
<Limit GET>
require user webstat
</Limit>
and use the htpasswd command to create the password for the webstat user ('htpassword -c /<install_path>/w3perl/admin/.htpasswd webstat')

- Protect also your stats directory if you want to have private stats
- Never run the stats as root

INSTALL
- If you want to use the old Fly/Flydraw graphics tool

W3Perl uses now Jqplot, a javascript library included in the package but Fly support have not been removed.

Download the package
Uncompress it and type 'make'
Copy the binary to /usr/bin/fly

- Make sure the configuration files you have built from the admin interface are also in your w3perl's cgi directory

If not, copy (and NOT move) them from the w3perl's config directory to your w3perl's cgi directory.
You'll need to call scripts with the -c flag to load this configuration file

If you need later to alter some fields in this configuration file, use the administration interface and select the modify section

- Plugins

If some plugins are required (cities report, IP Mapping, PDF report, Email report ...), it's time to install them.

- No logfile (Web user)

If you don't have logfile access, you can use a javascript tag.
Insert the following tag at the bottom of each page you want to monitor (just before the </body> tag).
<script type="text/javascript" src="/<w3perl_install_dir>/resources/js/w3perl_tag.js"></script>
where <w3perl_install_dir> is the directory where w3perl have been installed. A daily logile will be created. You'll have to wait the next day before computing the stats. Don't forget to password protect the w3perl /logs/ directory.

LAUNCH
- If you want first to make a small test

- Disable reverse dns, robot detection, referer spammer detection in your configuration file to increase speed.
- Go to the Immediate launch section, select your configuration file and run the 'First Run' stats
- To speed up, click on the 'Change options' to use a short intervalle of date (two days is a minimum)
- Watch the ouput in the View stats section

- Full run

You can run the stats from the web admin or from command line.
As it can take several hours (depending of your logfile size), time to take a cup of coffee ;)
  • Web admin : Go to the Immediate launch section, select your configuration file and run the 'All Stats' stats
  • Command line : type '/var/w3perl/cgi-bin/w3perl/cron-w3perl.pl -a' (add the -c flag to load your configuration file)

Don't mix web admin and command line launch as web server and user have different privileges. Web server will not be able to write in a user space


UPDATE
- Update your stats automatically

Everything is fine ? ... if so, you can now edit your configuration file to customize the scripts timetable launch and finally get this script to be launch each night

  • Unix : add this line in your crontab : [will run everyday at 00:01]
    01 00 * * * /var/w3perl/cgi-bin/w3perl/cron-w3perl.pl -c <your_config_file> -e
    (add '> /dev/null 2>&1' at the end of the line if you don't want a crontab report or add MAILTO:'<Your_email>' in the first line of your crontab if you want one)
    (-e flag will force all scripts to run as incremental)
  • Windows : use the 'at' command
- Make sure crontab user can read/write output w3perl directory and read log files.

- Upload your log files locally if needed

In the w3perl tools directory, there is a small shell script to upload your logfile from your provider and run the stats (cron-stats.sh)