This file is best viewed in SimpleText. It contains an exact copy of the help available from within Analog Helper, however in this format it can be viewed separately, or printed.
Introduction and Help
Analog Helper is a graphical configuration tool for Analog 3, which is a free program to analyse the logfiles from your web server. Analog Helper lets you control and preview the results of hundreds of settings, and means you need not touch the complex syntax of Analog's configuration files.
Analog itself was written by Stephen Turner and ported to Mac by Jason T. Linhart. It tells you which pages are most popular, which countries people are visiting from, which sites they tried to follow broken links from, etc... It is the fastest and most flexible such tool available.
Analog Helper works by letting you set up your web log analysis in an intuitive way. When you are ready to perform the analysis, it writes out the analog.cfg file, runs Analog, then opens the results in your web browser. However, you need not be aware of any of this process; simply set up your analysis as required in Analog Helper, and it will do the rest of the work.
Analog Helper can also import your old .cfg configuration files so that you have an easier way to adjust configurations you have already set up. There are also certain things that you can so with Analog Helper that cannot be done with Analog alone :
• Maintain multiple configurations in separate files.
• Automatically split an analysis into separate daily, weekly, monthly, or annual reports.
• Filter log files to analyse based on file modification date.
Analog Helper contains context-sensitive help for all of the available options, which can be toggled from the Help menu. If you do not know what a configuration option does, move the mouse over it and a description with examples will appear below. For highly detailed help on Analog's functionality, you may want to consult the documentation which comes with the Analog download.
We hope you find Analog Helper useful. If there are any queries, comments or suggestions, please contact us at support@sigsoftware.com.
Sig Software
http://www.sigsoftware.com/
Payment and Registration
Analog Helper is freely distributed as trial software. You are permitted to evaluate it for 28 days before discarding it, or purchasing a license. When Analog Helper is purchased, all of the output reports will be enabled.
Licensing
You must purchase one license for each computer on which Analog Helper is used. Licenses can be purchased with the enclosed Register Analog Helper program, using a page on the World Wide Web, or via telephone. Payment may be made by cash, cheque, VISA, MasterCard, American Express or First Virtual.
Pricing
Current pricing is $25 for a single-CPU license. There is excellent discount pricing available for multiple-license purchases; the Register Analog Helper application includes pricing for up to 20 licenses - for higher-volume pricing, please contact us at pricing@sigsoftware.com.
Purchasing a registration on the World Wide Web
• Click on Purchase via Web in the About Analog Helper dialog box or go to http://order.kagi.com/?BX
• Wait for the Web browser to load up the page.
• Enter name, address and eMail details (required) into the fields provided.
• Specify the number of licenses of Analog Helper that you require.
• Follow the rest of the instructions on the Web page.
Purchasing a registration using the register program
• Click on Purchase via Software in the about dialog box or run the enclosed Register Analog Helper application.
• Enter name, address and eMail details (required) into the fields provided.
• Specify how many licenses are required.
• Enter payment details in the area provided.
• Save, copy or print out the information, and forward to Kagi (as detailed below) for processing.
If you are sending the purchase via eMail :
• Click Copy to copy the order, and paste into an eMail message.
• Send to sales@kagi.com.
If you are sending the purchase via mail :
• Click Print to print the order, or Save to save to a file for printing later.
• Send to Kagi, 1442-A Walnut Street #392-BX, Berkeley, California, 94709-1405, USA.
If you are sending the purchase via fax :
• Click Print to print the order, or Save to save to a file for printing later.
• Fax to (US) 510 652-6589.
Purchasing a registration via telephone
• Call (US) 510 658-5244, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Follow the instructions on the telephone.
• If you require more than one license of Analog Helper, say so clearly.
• Clearly state your name, address, and eMail address (required).
• Telephone orders have a handling charge of $5.
Delays and Problems
Registrations may take up to a week to process, once they have been received by Kagi. Once payment has been processed, the license codes will be sent via eMail; multiple licenses will be indicated. If you have heard nothing within two weeks of ordering, or if there are any other problems, please contact support@sigsoftware.com. Thank you.
Getting Started with Analog Helper
To start using Analog Helper, either use the blank analysis that comes up when it is opened, or import a previous .cfg file using the Import command in the File menu. On the left, you will have a list of panels of options that you can edit. The first three contain global settings for an analysis, and these are described in the next help section. Each of the rest represents one of the reports that Analog can produce. These are described in a separate help section.
When you are ready to perform an analysis, click the Analyze button or hit return. If you only wish to write the analog.cfg file without actually performing the analysis, click Write Config. You can then perform the analysis later on by running Analog manually, however the output report will not automatically be opened upon completion. The On Open menu lets you set which action you would like Analog Helper to perform on the analysis file when it is opened from the Finder. You can stop this happening when the file is opened by either holding down a modifier key (shift, option, command, control) or opening the analysis from within Analog Helper by choosing Open from the File menu.
This panel is mainly for setting which log files you would like Analog to analyse. You can add individual files or entire folders of files to this list using drag-and-drop or by clicking the Add File / Folder button. You can filter log files within a selected folder by name or last modified date.
This panel also contains other options, which will be described by the context-sensitive help. Note: if you are creating multiple reports using the Create Reports option, you should set the Date from value (and the Date to if you wish), otherwise Analog Helper will have to make a sensible, but probably wrong, guess of the overall time period you are interested in.
Output Report
This panel lets you set various options connected to the final report file, which can be in text or HTML. You should set the Report Out File to the name and location you want. The Viewing Program sets which program the final report will be made to belong to and therefore what it will be opened in if Open after Analysis is on.
The Image Directory is a relative path from this output report location. If you leave it as "images/", ensure you have a copy of Analog's images folder in the same location as the output report, otherwise graph bars and other pictures will not show up. The Logo Image File is relative to the image directory.
Note: if you switch on domain name lookups in the Domain name mode menu, be aware that analyses will probably take at least 10 times longer than otherwise.
Inclusions / Exclusions
This panel contains several rule lists (see next section for how rule lists are applied). The three under Filter log entries by allow you to perform an analysis on only a part of the requests made to your web site. You can restrict the analysis to the actual files requested, to the URL of the referring page, or to the address of the requesting host.
The two under Keep arguments for let you set which requests and which referring URLs have their arguments (that's the section of the URL after the '?') kept for analysing. If the argument is dropped, two items such as "/cgi-bin/search?info" and "/cgi-bin/search?contact" will be analysed as identical.
The two under Add report links for determine which requests and referrers in their respective reports are given HTML links to their actual pages.
The Pages rule list lets you set which file names would qualify as referring to a web page (as opposed to an image or CGI script) - you can usually leave this as it is.
Lastly, the Analog Configuration Commands list lets you add any additional commands which will be written out directly at the end of the analog.cfg file. This way, you can use any of the few Analog features that Analog Helper does not support, or override any of the commands which Analog Helper outputs.
Include / Exclude Rule Lists
All Include / Exclude rule lists are interpreted in the same manner. The order of the rules in the list does make a difference, and the algorithm applied is as follows : To decide whether an item should be included, the last rule that matches the item is used. If, however, the item matched none of the rules, it is included if the first rule was an Exclude, and excluded if the first rule was an Include. Here is an example :
(1) Include : A*
(2) Exclude : *N*
(3) Include : G*
For this rule list, the following items would be included : ALPHA (matches 1), GAMMA (matches 3), GAIN (matches 2, 3). The following items would be excluded : BETA (matches none, so excluded since first rule was an Include), AGAIN (matches 1, 2), NAG (matches 2).
As you may have noticed, you can use the "*" character as a wildcard in a rule and it will match any series of zero or more characters. For example, the rule A*ND* would match AND, ABANDON and ANDES.
For all rule lists where it would make sense, you can use the keyword "pages" to refer to all page files (where the rules for determining what qualifies as a page is set in the Pages section of the Inclusions / Exclusions panel).
Lastly, for several of the reports, you can also add a Sub Rule (or Sub-Include). These are used in hierarchical reports; see the next section for more details.
Reports and Graphs
The reports to be output can be switched on and off by clicking on the right next to the name of the report. The reports can be reordered by dragging vertically. Each report contains a different set of relevant options; all possibilities are listed here below (in alphabetical order) :
Add Include / Exclude : Click one of these buttons to add a rule to determine which rows are shown in the report. See the previous section for help on using rule lists. Note: the Normal limit setting may still exclude a row that would be included based on the rule list.
Add Sub Rule : In hierarchical reports, you can choose which sub-items are shown as separate rows in the report. A sub rule might be a sub-directory, a sub-domain, a sub-file type or a sub-browser. You can use wildcards here as you would for other rules. Note: the Sub-row limit setting may still exclude a row that would be included based on the rule list.
Argument limit : This specifies the limit on which argument rows should be shown in the report (i.e. where a separate row is shown with an URL's arguments). It works in the same way as Normal limit; see that section for more information.
Columns : This pop-up menu lets you switch columns on and off in the report's graph. Note: not every column will be available for every report type.
Graph by : This specifies which statistic the graph bars (shown in red in the Sample) should be based on.
Maximum number of rows : This specifies a maximum number of rows to show in the graph.
Normal limit : This specifies the limit on which rows should be shown in the report. You can choose how this should be calculated, based on a minimum number of pages, bytes or requests, a minimum percentage of the total pages, bytes or requests or a minimum percentage of the row with the most pages, bytes or requests. For these three options, Analog Helper will automatically pick (and show you) whether it will use pages, bytes or requests depending on the Sort by setting. You can also simply specify a maximum number of rows to include, or to include rows which have a last access date after a specified date.
Sample : This is an example of the report's output, based on random fictional data. You can drag columns within the Sample area to reorder them - use the Columns menu to add or remove columns. The Sample area will not show the include / exclude rule list or limits being applied, however it does show the result of the Columns, Graph by, Sort backwards and Sort by settings.
Sort backwards : This toggles whether a report should have the order of its rows reversed.
Sort by : This specifies the method which should be used for sorting the rows of the report. This setting may also affect the
limit settings.
Sub-row limit : This specifies the limit on which sub-rows should be shown in the report (i.e. where a separate row is shown for a sub-directory, sub-browser, etc...). It works in the same way as Normal limit; see that section for more information.
Frequently Asked Questions
What version of Analog does Analog Helper require?
Analog Helper needs version 3.0 of Analog or later. It will automatically prompt you if a copy of this is not found on your disk.
What can I do with my old .cfg files?
Analog Helper can import these, using Import from the File menu. A few of the lines in your config file may not be imported, and you will receive a full summary of the import operation when it is completed. You can drag information out of this report onto the desktop as a clipping file.
How do I manage multiple virtual domains?
This depends on how you have you web server configured to write the logs for the separate domains. If it actually records the virtual host as a separate field in log files, you should add the command VHOSTINCLUDE www.mydomain.com to the Analog Configuration Commands section in the Inclusions / Exclusions panel.
However, if it logs requests in made-up directories to mimic the different virtual domains, you should use the Filter log entries by Requested file setting in the Inclusions / Exclusions panel to only include requests from the desired virtual domain. (In this case, also add a Sub-Rule to the directory report to include the real directories on your web site inside the made-up directories).
What about configuration commands Analog Helper doesn't support?
In the Inclusions / Exclusions panel, you can add any extra commands you need in the Analog Configuration Commands section. These will be written at the end of the analog.cfg file.
What about other languages?
Analog Helper supports all the languages that can be accessed using the LANGUAGE command for version 3.0. If you want to use a different language, or a langfile, add the command manually in the Analog Configuration Commands section of the Inclusions / Exclusions panel.
Will I lose my current analog.cfg file?
No. Analog Helper is very careful not to overwrite your current analog.cfg file unless it was created by Analog Helper itself. If an analog.cfg file was found by Analog Helper which it had to remove, the file will have been renamed analog.cfg.old and will be in its original location.
What happens with manconf.cfg?
As before, Analog will automatically read the manconf.cfg file after it has read the configuration set up by Analog Helper. So you can continue to use manconf.cfg to contain overriding settings or lists of aliases.
Are aliases supported?
Analog Helper does not currently support input or output aliases (which let you map certain values to others in order to group them or make them more readable). However, aliases will not be lost if you import a .cfg file, and will be added to the Analog Configuration Commands section of the Inclusions / Exclusions panel. We recommend you put aliases into the manconf.cfg file which Analog always reads last so that they are accessible to all your configurations.
How does multiple report generation work?
If you choose one of the options from the Create Reports menu of the Input Files panel, Analog Helper will automatically step through all the chosen time periods, generating a separate output report file for each one. These will be named as the Report File in the Output Report panel, but will be prefixed with the relevant date.
How do I edit an Analog Helper file without it automatically analyzing?
You can hold down one of the modifier keys (shift, command, option, control) when you open the file, or you can open it by choosing Open from the File menu instead of opening it from the Finder. Once the file is open, you can switch off automatic analysis using the On Open menu at the bottom of the configuration window.
Any distribution of Analog Helper must include this file. No responsibility about Analog Helper's functionality or integrity is implied. This document and Analog Helper are copyright of the author. Other trademarks are copyright of their respective owners.
