Best Tools For Web Server Log Processing & Statistics Running WordPress

The topic is nothing new, possibly in last 8 years we discussed 8 times. The reason to repeatedly publish similar posts because of limitations of Free Software at the time of publication and continuous development of new tools. Commonly We Run One Server One WordPress Website Setup. Here Are Some Best Tools For Web Server Log Processing & Statistics Running WordPress Which Are Self-Hosted. Obviously, it is risky to host a third party JavaScript like that of Google Analytics to help their collaboration with Governmental mass surveillance.

Best Tools For Web Server Log Processing & Statistics Running WordPress

Actually two things – log analysis and hit counting is slightly different. Apache HTTP Server hit counter needs real time log analysis and if you want more detailed for security – it can go highly complex. We clearly have two types of software – Basic and Advance. For the advanced users, I would suggest to arrange both basic and advanced. Basic will do everyday job for an overview while advanced tools are really towards big data analysis based and supposed to happen on separate web server for more security and control on server resource usage.

Basic Tools For Web Server Log Processing & Statistics

WP Statistics WordPress Plugin : Enough for the most users. Available on official WordPress Plugin repository.

AWStats : Most known. AWStat is written in Perl and one of the most active projects, but sadly slower.

Webalizer : Webalizer is a free web server log file analysis program which produces detailed, easily configurable usage reports for viewing with a standard web browser.

W3Perl : Like AWStat. It is also written in Perl, active project, but slower.

GoAccess : We have guides on GoAccess. GoAccess has Web UI too. It is one of the modern looking tool available.

Piwik/Momato : Possibly it is what can be said as Free Software version of Google Analytics.

Open Web Analytics (OWA) : PHP based web analytics. Worthy to test, lighter than Piwik/Momato.

Graylog : PHP based web analytics. Worthy to test, again lighter than Piwik/Momato.

Both Piwik/Momato and Graylog has paid services for higher need. However, in front of cheap OpenVZ VPS like VPSDime or Aruba Cloud, those are too much costly for an individual.

Advanced Tools For Web Server Log Processing & Statistics

Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK Stack) : Definitely most commonly used combination. We have guides on ELK Stack.

Others : Of course we can include Hadoop, collect log data with fluentd or Apache Flume. The topic is different hence we are not going in to details in this article.