In the second of this regular column which reviews software which is used by Exploit Interactive we report on two externally-hosted web statistics services which are used to provide details of use of the web site. Background Exploit Interactive aims not only to provide a dissemination channel for the EU's Telematics For Libraries programme, but also to provide advice and guidance to members of the European library and information community. In particular we can provide advice based on the experiences we have gained in providing this web magazine. In early January 2000 we introduced two externally-hosted Web statistical services on the Exploit Interactive web site. In this article we report on our experiences.
Most people are interested in web statistics.
The statistics may be needed to justify the costs of the service, to monitor where the visitors are coming from, to investigate how the web site is being used or to detect broken links or other problems with the web site. But it can be difficult to provide access to web statistics to a range of information providers. There may be a cost for the software - although software such as Analog is freely available, software which provides richer functionality may have to be purchased. Once the software has been obtained effort must be spent in installing the software, configuring the web server and managing the log files. Although this can, and should, be automated, it may be difficult to allow, say, departmental information providers to carry out data mining of their data.