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Supported Log Formats

WebLog Expert supports log files of the most popular web servers: Apache and IIS.

Apache Logs
The program supports Combined and Common log formats of Apache web server. We recommend you to use the Combined log format because the Common log format doesn't contain information about referrers and user agents (OS, browsers, spiders). By default Apache uses the Common log format but the majority of hosting providers set the Combined log format for Apache on their servers.

Here is a sample of log entry in Combined format:
213.135.131.79 - - [15/May/2002:19:21:49 -0400] "GET /features.htm HTTP/1.1" 200 9955 "http://www.weblogexpert.com/download.htm" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461)"

Log format can be configured by editing the "httpd.conf" file in the Apache conf directory (if you have access to this file). The configuration settings for the log file should look like the following:

# The following directive defines the "combined" nickname
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

# The location and format of the access log file
CustomLog logs/access.log combined


If your Apache log files contain information about multiple virtual domains (sites) hosted on the same server you can also use the following configuration settings:

# The following directive defines the "combinedvhost" nickname
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %v" combinedvhost

# The location and format of the access log file
CustomLog logs/access.log combinedvhost

In this case log entries will have Combined format with one extra field (virtual domain). WebLog Expert needs this information if you use the "virtual domain" filter.

You can read more about Apache logs at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/logs.html


IIS Logs
WebLog Expert supports the W3C Extended log format that is the default log format of IIS 4/5/6/7. By default IIS log files contain only few fields but you can configure IIS to show another fields:
1. Open the "Properties" dialog for your web server.
2. On the "Web Site" property sheet choose "W3C Extended Log File Format" as the active log format.
3. Click the "Properties" button to open the "Extended Logging Properties" dialog.
4. Use the "Extended Properties" sheet to set the logged fields.

The current version of WebLog Expert uses the following fields:

  • Date (date)
  • Time (time)
  • Client IP Address (c-ip)
  • User Name (cs-username)
  • Method (cs-method)
  • URI Stem (cs-uri-stem)
  • URI Query (cs-uri-query)
  • Protocol Status (sc-status)
  • Bytes Sent (sc-bytes)
  • Time Taken (time-taken)
  • Host (cs-host)
  • User Agent (cs(User-Agent))
  • Referer (cs(Referer))

However, we recommend you to check all the available fields, not only the above ones, because the other fields may be used in the future versions of the program.