Configuring Data Collection

The Data Collection menu of the General tab allows you to configure how your website data will be collected for analysis by Logaholic. Each of the three Data Collection methods has its own setup procedure as well as its own advantages and disadvantages. A fourth method, Logaholic’s Hybrid Mode, allows you to combine methods to give you greater flexibility over how your website data is collected.

Click on the name of the Method listed below for more information.

1. Javascript Based Tracking
This option provides you with the Javascript code that you can copy and paste into each web page you wish to track within Logaholic. To track your entire website, simply copy this code once into a common header or footer component (or other common HTML component) that displays on every page of your website. This code is executed with each page as it is displayed, transferring the tracking information for use within Logaholic. The code is invisible for your visitors and will not slow down or block your site in case there is no connection with your Logaholic.

2. Log File Analysis (FTP Download)
This option will copy the web server log file from your remote server to a subdirectory of the folder where Logaholic is installed locally for processing. This option requires that you use either an installed FTP Client or Logaholic’s built-in FTP function. To configure this option, you will also need to provide the credentials of your FTP account and FTP access to the location of the log files on the remote server.

3. Log File Analysis (Local file)
This option imports your local web server log file into Logaholic for analysis, the logfile contains information about your website visitors, where they came from, how they navigate your site, etc., To configure this option, you will need to provide the directory pathname of your local web server log file.

4. Hybrid Mode
Hybrid Mode provides the best of both worlds, combining web server log data with Logaholic’s unique Java Tracker data, which includes data not available in your web server logs.


Which Method should you choose?

(Java Tracker or Log File analysis)


  • Log files contain historical web site data. The Java Tracker only begins collecting data after you have tagged your website pages with the javascript tracking code.
  • Using log files, you can track every file on your server. The Java Tracker only tracks those pages you have tagged by adding the javascript tracking code.
  • Using log files, you can better detect crawler activity, deep linkers, click fraud, spammers and errors.
  • Using log files, you can track visitors who have javascript disabled in their browser.
  • Using log files, you cannot track Screen Resolution and Color Palette, unless you use Logaholic's Hybrid mode.


Tip: Logaholic supports several different Log File Formats You can also create your own custom log file format if you find that some of the data you need isn’t included in your Logaholic reports because it isn’t being tracked in your log files.

In general we recommend using log files. However, there are some situations where using the Java Tracker is preferred over using log files.

  • When you cannot access your log files, such as when security on your web hosting service makes it impossible for Logaholic to access them.
  • When your site is very large or complex, has a great deal of traffic, and the log files get very large very quickly. In this situation, you may wish to use the Java Tracker to track only those pages you are most interested in analyzing. Selective page tracking will keep your Logaholic database smaller, and Logaholic will run faster as a result.


Tip: Configure Logaholic to collect and analyze only your most significant data. By stripping certain URL’s as well as skipping specific IP addresses and files, you can eliminate the overhead of collecting useless data, keep Logaholic’s database compact, make your web analytics run faster, and lighten the load on your system.

The following video by Tim Wilson explains in four minutes how a Java Tracker works and why you may wish to choose this method for collecting data for your website.



Click the “Save Changes” button at the top of the page to save your changes, or click the “Cancel” button to undo your changes.

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