Question

I am the programmer for the Education department at a county hospital. I would like to be able to see some real-time stats on an IIS6 web server that is only accessible in-house. I'm looking for something similar to what 1and1.com provides for their customers (if you're familiar with what they offer).

I have a Classic ASP/VBScript based Learning Management System that I would like to do some traffic analysis on, and the last package I tried (the site for it no longer exists) ran fine for a year, and then started massively slowing down the server.

In no particular order, I would like:

  • I would like to track who visited what page as we have Basic Authentication turned on (optional)
  • I would like to track what pages are most frequently visited
  • I would like to be able to track a given individual's progress from page to page. This is something I sort-of did with the old tool and found it very helpful.
  • I would like to see basic stats on the browsers: window size, color depth, type, etc. I know our IST department says we are all using IE6, and they say a few other stats that the last package showed to be a little less than correct. I want to know what I need to work with.
  • I would like to not have to remote in to the server to run an .exe or any of the other fun, convoluted solutions I've seen floating around...

While I would prefer an ASP/VBScript solution so I can more easily fix it if needed, I would be willing to use a PHP or ASP.NET based solution if that's all I can get my hands on. I've stumbled across a couple of ASP.NET packages, and some of them look like they may be worthwhile.

Preemptively I would like to go ahead and say:

  • No, I am not going ditch ASP/VBScript as I am the sole developer and I just don't have the time.
  • Please no comments about IE6 either. Its pointless as there's nothing I've been able to do about it.
  • No, I can't use Google Analytics. This is in-house so any and all options that I can't install on my server are out. This is non-negotiable.
  • All Google Analytics-like programs are out too. Anything that requires hits back to some outside service is out.
  • PERL is not installed, nor am I willing to install it. This is not up for discussion.

I'm sure there's some detail I've forgotten to add to the question, but I'll add it when I remember.

Was it helpful?

Solution 6

Ended up going with SmarterStats as mentioned at:

IIS monitoring tool

Its free for one site (which is all I need to monitor), it tracks almost everything I need to track, and so far it runs quite nicely.

Thank you all for your answers.

OTHER TIPS

To the best o my knowledge, Splunk is one of the best players in that area. You can use it for free up to about 500MB of logs per day. OSSec has a slightly different focus (intrusion detection), but might also be useful for your (seemingly basic) purposes.

Piwik "aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics."

It requires PHP and MySQL (to host it on your own server).

Try Feedjit. The paid widget is $10 a month and you get all the stats you've asked for and you can see users surfing from page to page. Live demo of Feedjit's own traffic here using the commercial option:

http://feedjit.com/pro/feedjitpub/

There is also a free widget.

I use Woopra on a number of sites. It shows a wealth of real-time info and even let's you interact with your site users. Here is a full screen shot.

Screenshot

This is the product I use to analyze my web logs... It's not 'real-time' per se, but it can be configured to run a service and produce reports at regular intervals...

http://www.nihuo.com/web-log-analyzer.html

Best of all, it's not drastically expensive :)

They have a sample report online here so you can see if it's what you're after.

Look into VisiStat. Real time and Hosted. Live support and excellent customer service. Woopra has a list you need to be a part of to get. It is also a BETA application that might never be released. VisiStat is on it's 6th version and offered publicly.

I have recently stumbled over Chart Beat:

http://chartbeat.com/

a few big companies use them (mahalo etc)

It's not a free service (their site says $9.95 a month?)

Licensed under: CC-BY-SA with attribution
Not affiliated with StackOverflow
scroll top