Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Server Log Analysis

The most meaningful statistics are those culled from your own site’s usage. There are software tools designed just for this purpose, all of which work basically the same way.

When a browser accesses files from a server, it leaves a record of that transaction on the server, including a little data about itself: specifically, its version and the platform it is running on. This information is known as the user agent string , and it is used by analysis software to generate statistics about the browser usage for a site. A typical user agent string might look like this:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)

There are dozens of log analysis tools available at a wide variety of costs. Many hosting companies include some level of server statistics as part of their hosting packages. You may also install special statistics software for better reporting. A web search for “web statistics analysis” will turn up many companies offering statistics analysis.

Another option is to sign up with a service such as The Counter (mentioned earlier) that puts a counter on your web page and provides usage stats in exchange for ad placement on your page.

The Mozilla Legacy

Today, we know Mozilla as the foundation that guides the development of the open source Mozilla software. So it may be confusing to see Mozilla at the beginning of a user agent string for Internet Explorer, as shown in the earlier example.

The Mozilla identifier at the beginning of a typical user agent string is an ...