logging website visits, how??

[Jeff]

ASP.NET 2.0

In my webproject I want to implement some kind of functionality which logs
the vistits to the website. I want it to log what pages the user requested,
when he arrived at the website (session_start), when he leave the website
(session_end).. if some exception occur then that should be logged also

I'm thinking about using the health monitoring system for logging
exceptions. For site visits I'm thinking of putting some code in for example
Page_Load event and when the page is opened then a table in the database is
updated.

Is this a good approach?? any suggestions?? anyone got a link to a great
article showing best practice doing this (I've been googling and cannot find
a good article about the subject)??

Jeff

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Jeff,
I'm not sure if you can do what you want on the session_end. Mostly
that's for cleanup and, if I remember correctly from previous experience
with session_end events in IIS and ASP, you're not allowed to create certain
objects such as database connections since you're meant to be destroying
them. Session_End may not give you much info though as it's pretty much not
representative of when the user left as it's fired when there's a 20 minute
inactivity period or the application decides to correct itself.

Have you thought of, instead of trying to capture all of this
information yourself (which will require a performance hit as you have to
output everything to somewhere), of just building some sort of live parser
for your web server logs? IIS already keeps track of all this information,
and does it very efficiently. You could just parse through this data,
perhaps storing it into a db for access later or for performing tasks such
as reverse IP lookups for dns resolution. This would still be a decent task,
but it's only have the problem as you would already have the information
gathering system, you would just need the report viewer for the web logs.

 

[John Timney \(MVP\)]

Dont do it, theres a million tools available that can do 95% of what you
need already and for the remainder its not worth the investment in
development time for the return you get. This is a superb option for
free.....

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_faq.html

Regards

John Timney (MVP)
http://www.johntimney.com
http://www.johntimney.com/blog

 

[Guest]

Is this a good approach?? any suggestions?? anyone got a link to a great
article showing best practice doing this (I've been googling and cannot find
a good article about the subject)??

What about using a third-party logs?

E.g. http://www.google.com/analytics/

It logs entrances, exits and many other things.

 

[Guest]

What about using a third-party logs?

E.g.http://www.google.com/analytics/

It logs entrances, exits and many other things.

AWstats is also nice (however, it required a Perl)

 

[Bob Johnson]

My strong recommendation is to go with AlterWind Log Analyzer Pro:

http://www.alterwind.com/

Unlike AWStats, AlterWind does not require Perl or any other such nonsense.

-HTH

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

SmarterStats is a good no-nonsense choice, too...and it has a free version :

http://www.smartertools.com/Products/SmarterStats/Free.aspx