Statistics Configuration

Web servers produce a log of all pages visited, images displayed (e.g., GIFs, JPEGs) and programs (CGIs) executed. ShopSite uses this log to determine your store's visitor statistics. You will probably need to contact the Webmaster for your server to learn the log file location.

To tell ShopSite where the log file is located, you need to specify the directory it is located in (Server log file path) and the name of the log file (Server log filename).

Depending on how your server is set up you may have your own log file or the log file may be shared with other sites. If your site has its own log file then the Store ID substring can be left blank or contain a forward slash '/'. If the log file is shared ShopSite needs to know which entries in the file are for your store. This can be done by entering part of your store's URL that uniquely identifies your site. If you have your own domain then your domain name might work. Otherwise it's probably your store ID (store name that's part of your URL).

So you will not have to regularly click the Empty Store Log button (see below), ShopSite Pro will automatically shrink the "store" log periodically. For example, suppose you have a 31 in the line that says Keep Page and Referrer details at least 31 days. Every 31 days ShopSite will shrink the store log the next time you view your statistics. When it shrinks the log, it will remove everything older than 31 days. This saves disk space, but limits how far back you can view summaries of pages, hosts, and referrers.

 

Clear Sales Counters

Use this button to zero out the sales statistics. If you had been testing your store, but were now ready to open the site for business, you would want to reset all your test sales to zero.

 

Clear Traffic Counters

Similar to Clear Sales Counters clicking this button will zero out all your visitor traffic numbers. You would use this feature if you were done configuring and testing your store and now wanted to set everything to zero before you opened for business.

 

Empty Order Log (ShopSite Pro)

In ShopSite Pro when you select Page Summary it uses the log file to calculate on which pages orders came from. If the order log has become too large, use this button to delete it. The order log is only used by the Page Summary option, so deleting it does not remove any orders nor does it affect the sales statistics.

 

Empty Store Log

ShopSite extracts from the Web server log the relevant information for calculating page visits and referrers (in ShopSite Pro) and stores them in the store log. If this file becomes too large, use this button to delete it. Removing the file may affect the visitor statistics for the current day but the previous days, month, and year numbers will not be lost.

 

Update Store Log Now

Whenever you view the Statistics page, the store log file is automatically updated, so you would not normally need to use this button. However, it you were testing your configuration settings, this is an easy way to see if the configuration was properly set.

 

Date/Time Read

Whenever ShopSite reads your Web server log file, it starts from where it last read in the log file. This prevents ShopSite from counting the same page visits more than once. You normally would never need to change the default setting (Don't reset last date/time read) unless your Web server logs were somehow changed. If you change the default setting, first try the Reset last date/time read according to last request in your store log option. This will take the last known time that data was moved from the Web server log to the store log and use this as the starting point for reading from the Web server log. As a last resort you can use the final option (Reset last date/time read to the following: ) to have ShopSite read the Web server log beginning at the date and time specified.

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