Interpreting Server Logs

This page is not a restatement of the obvious. The structure and the meaning of the contents of server logs is described in great detail on other websites. These are my own experiences and theories on what I have seen in my own logs and what I have done as a consequence.

Files or pages not found

These are seen as entries in the logs by 404 errors. Until recently I didn't bother with sitemaps or a robots.txt file. I have now added these.

Notices and Warnings

These seem to have been triggered by programing errors or inconsistancies in my PHP files. In many of these cases I concentrated on getting the pages to work. Looking in the server logs I now find there are things that I need to revisit.

Awstats

At the present time, January 2021, my Awstats do not seem to report anything sensible. They do not reflect the activity that I see in the server logs. I think that this is a problem with my hosting service as I see that this has been an issue with cPanel configuration.