ELF and MALF log files

[stanb]

Do the ELF and MALF log files continue to grow in size ad infinitum? It would appear that downloading, archiving and deleting the server files regularly would save some server space. Anyone have a "standard" procedure for managing these files? Thanks.

Stan B.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Better question: Do you have a specific need to have them turned on?

The MALF log is useful when debugging, and the ELF log for Urchin Statistics, if you are not doing either, turn them off and delete them. They are pretty useless for anything else.

[PicturesqueWeb]

Urchin has built in log file rotation, although it's better done using savelogs. A more serious issue I find is the mysql logging. Turn that bad boy off if you don't need it.

[stanb]

Unforunately I don't have Urchin available on the server.

How do I generate sales reports...sales per territory, per customer, per month? How do I track a user's behavior through the buying process and generate a report on this? ..and, this is key, how do I do it inexpensively (like <$100)? Statisticka does this for $50 but requires a download mechanism. Seems like it would make more sense just to use a simple Perl script to parse the tab delimited ELF and MALF files. Maybe I should be exporting order data and parsing those files instead? Any thoughts/suggestions for a low-budget solution?

Stan B.

[dotCOM_host]

You could import the logs into Excel and manipulate it there, but, that's a lot of manual work and downloading files all the time to generate the stats. Check with your host to see if they offer Urchin stats. If they do, you are looking at just a few dollars/month at most (as a point of reference, we offer Urchin stats with the e-commerce add-on for just $10/month). That should be within your price range, and will save you a lot more than $10 in your time alone trying to do this by hand.

[PicturesqueWeb]

If your host doesn't offer an Urchin option, moving to a host that offers Urchin is the only solution I can think of short of buying software. I use http://www.alpineweb.com who offers Miva Merchant hosting and free Urchin.