Website Statistics

• Exclude your own hits from stats
• Where are the search engine keywords?
• Meaning of Main Page Icons
• Main Page Tips
• Understanding the Path Analysis Page
• Path Analysis Page Tips
• Administration Page Tips
• Getting stats to show on web pages
• Custom data in multiple languages
• Be Patient
• What does TraceWatch code actually do?
• About Crashed Tables

Exclude Your Own Hits from Stats

To inhibit logger from counting your own page views check "Don't count me" checkbox in the login page, a cookie will be set in your browser which indicates hits from this browser should not be counted.

Remember that this cookie will not expire when your "remember me for 7 days" expires. To remove this cookie from your browser you should check "Count me from now on if you were not" checkbox in the logout page.

Where are the Search Engine Keywords?

See "Show details" icon explanation below.

Meaning of Main Page Icons

History Graph

Click on this icon in front of any statistical data to view history graph for that data.

Find in Latest Visitors

Click on this icon in front of any statistical data to find visitors with that data in "Latest Visitors" page, e.g. if you click on this icon in front of "Google Search" in referrers list you will only see visitors coming from Google search in the "Latest Visitors" page.

Find in Path Analysis page

Click on this icon in front of any referrer URL or page to find it in "Path Analysis" page.
Remember that because processing of data in path analysis page is delayed for one day you might have some data in main page which are not in path analysis page yet.

Show details

Clicking on this icon have different meaning for different types of data

• For search engines shows the keywords
• For domains shows full URLs
• For robots shows pages visited by that robot
• etc...

View All

Normally only top 6 of any statistical data shows on the lists, click on this icon will show all of them

Main Page Tips

• If you're using firefox and you just see white boxes instead of distribution graphs download the latest version of flash player.
• If you don't close the graph pop-up window subsequent clicks on different graph buttons will directly communicate with the flash movie within the pop-up window and prevents reloading of the pop-up and flash movie each time you click.
• Closing main report page or navigating to a different page will automatically close any pop-up opened by that window.
• Click on a day on history graph to go to that day in main report page.

Understanding the Path Analysis Page

This page may seem complicated at first but it becomes easy to use if you get the concept.

Make a path by subsequently clicking on pages in columns to get information about visitors who have moved along that path. (where they come from, where they go to, ...)

** First Column is for referrers, Second column is for entry pages, Other columns are free columns.

** Selection in adjacent columns means going directly from left page to right page. When there is space between columns it means there may be any path between those pages.

See the examples below, Assume we have referrer X and three pages A, B and C (dash means nothing selected in the column):

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4	Column 5	Meaning
X	-	-	-	-	Visitors referred by X
X	A	-	-	-	Visitors referred by X and start with page A
X	-	A	-	-	Visitors referred by X and get to page A from any path (to make such path you need to deselect the selection in column 2 after clicking on A in column 3)
-	A	-	-	-	Visitors starting with page A
-	-	A	-	-	Visitors who get to A from any path.
-	-	-	A	-	Has the same meaning as above
X	A	B	-	-	Visitors Referred by X, start from A and go directly to B
X	A	-	B	-	Visitors Referred by X, start from A and then get to B from any path.
-	A	-	B	-	Visitors who start from A and get to B from any path.
-	-	A	B	-	Visitors who get to A from any path and go directly to B.
-	-	A	-	B	Visitors who get to A from any path then get to B from any path.
-	A	B	C	-	Visitors who start with A, go directly to B and then directly to C.
-	-	A	B	C	Visitors who get to A from any path, go directly to B and then directly to C.
And so on...

Well! you need to play with this page to get used to it ;)

Path Analysis Page Tips

If you're using firefox and the reset button doesn't work download the latest version of flash player.

Administration Page Tips

• On graphs and main report page you get "average of the month" instead of detailed daily data for deleted days. by default TraceWatch automatically deletes data with daily resolution older than 12 months.
• You can't trim current month and today data. In other words you can't set the auto-trim to 0 that's because TraceWatch can only determine top 20 of complete days and months. This means you must have enough storage space for at least one day and one month of untrimmed data. by default TraceWatch trims monthly data 1 month old and daily data 3 days old.
• You can also delete ANY data before a certain month. this will even readjust "working since" date. I don't recommend using this, keep at least trimmed monthly data for older months this data take very little space in database.

Getting stats to show on web pages

Read PHP API section.

Custom data in multiple languages

To have your custom phrases like website and time-zone names in multiple languages open twatch_include/lang/template_ext.php in an editor and follow the instruction written as comment in the file.

What does TraceWatch code actually do?

Almost nothing :) It only registers a shutdown function.
When the execution of your page is finished the shutdown function is called. All of the logging and processing of a visitor's information will be carried out by the shutdown function and therefore will not interrupt your existing code.

Be Patient!

• For graphs TraceWatch ignores first and last days which are incomplete days therefore 4 days must pass before you get any meaningful graph.
• Visitor's path of each day will be evaluated for path analysis on the next day.
• The first time you access report pages it may take some time to load, next time your browser loads .js and .swf files from the cache and pages become much faster.

About Crashed Tables

When you use MySQL your tables may get corrupted. This is not due to any bug in TraceWatch, it's the nature of MySQL default MYISAM tables which are not fail-safe.

In theory it should never happen, on most servers you will never face crashed tables.

Here is an excerpt from MySQL manual about causes of crashed tables:

• The mysqld process being killed in the middle of a write.
• Unexpected shutdown of the computer (for example, if the computer is turned off).
• A hardware error.
• You are using an external program (like myisamchk) on a live table.
• A software bug in the MySQL or MyISAM code.

When any TraceWatch table gets corrupted it becomes inaccessible and therefore TraceWatch stops working properly, the symptom is you start getting errors in the error log.

In such case you should go to TraceWatch administration page and click on 'Repair Tables'. This will check all tables and repair corrupted ones.

In addition you can enable daily auto-repair (it is enabled by default) in which case TraceWatch checks all tables once a day and repairs any possible corrupted table.