This is an important part of looking at your statistics. Some simple scripts call
every access a hit, and give you inflated counts. Others filter out all images and sounds,
but count every other access, which still gives you inflated counts.
The only real way to get an accurate count is to look at the HTTP status code for the
request as well. This tells you whether it was a valid request, or an error, or a
redirect, etc. More information about this can be found in the
Information section.
Can I modify MKStats to meet my specific needs?
Yes. Part of the benefit of it being written in Perl is that it can easily be
changed to meet the needs of a variety of people and companies. If you make modifications,
however, you are not allowed to re-distribute the modified version in any way, and I cannot
be held responsible for any problems it may cause. If you are a single user who is allowed to
use the program at no cost, you may modify the program as well but may not remove the link
back to www.mkstats.com from the reports.
What is your address to send payment to?
Matt Kruse
PO Box 194
Milan, IL 61264 USA
Why don't you count individual users and/or "sessions"?
Because, simply, there is no accurate way to do it. It would be very handy to see exactly which
paths people are taking through your sites, how many return visitors you have, etc. But unfortunately,
the log files simply record requests, not which individual users they came from or what they have
requested before. It is possible to approximate this kind of information, but it is often wrong
(especially in the cases of companies behind firewalls, which accounts for a lot of people). I can
easily fool a system like this without even trying. And if you can't trust the information you get
from this type of system, what good is it? That's why I chose not to even include that kind of
approximation. I'd rather have my reports be 100% correct, not subject to interpretations. In the
future, more useful logs may give us this type of information, but currently it is just something
you should do without.
Can you tell me the average time spent on each page?
Yes, I could, but it would be a very rough estimate. I actually had this fully implemented in
a pre-release version of MKStats2, but I did tests and found the numbers to be very inaccurate - even
more so than the situations described above. So incorrect, in fact, that the information was
completely useless, so I took it out.
Which Operating systems will this work on?
I have personally tested it on Windows 95, Windows NT, Linux, SunOS, and SGI Irix. It should
work on any system which runs Perl 5.
host: Either the DNS name or the IP number of the remote client
rfc931: Any information returned by identd for this person, - otherwise.
authuser: If user sent a userid for authentication, the user name, - otherwise.
DD: Day
Mon: Month (calendar name)
YYYY: Year
hh: hour (24-hour format, the machine's timezone)
mm: minutes
ss: seconds
request: The first line of the HTTP request as sent by the client.
ddd: the status code returned by the server, - if not available.
bbbb: the total number of bytes sent, *not including the HTTP/1.0 header*, - if not available
How do I get an agent_log and referer_log with Netscape's servers?
Chris Gullete wrote this document explaining how
this can be done.
When I try to create the gif charts, I get errors - why?
To create the gif charts, you must have GD.pm properly installed on your system.
The source code for the GD libraries and GD.pm are available at www.mkstats.com,
separate from the MKStats distribution, but you must install them yourself. I cannot provide
support for these routines, and cannot help you install it on your system. Read the
installation instructions carefully.
Why won't version 2.x of MKStats work with Perl 4.xxx?
I now require perl 5 for a few reasons. First, it allows me to do many things that perl 4 cannot do, such
as use the GD libraries, use multiple-dimensional arrays, etc. Second, I found it impossible to maintain two
separate programs - one for perl 4 and one for perl 5. Since perl 5 is the "standard" now, and is very well
tested, everyone should really have it anyway.
I get a core dump, or some odd error messages when I try to run it. Why?
Make sure you are using the latest version of Perl 5 (5.002 at the time of this writing).
Some versions of 5.001 had bugs that cause problems.
When I run mkstats, it can't find the config file. Why?
Make sure you set the working directory correctly in the install.pl script.
