Overview
This article provides information about the Site Statistics page in the panel.
Background
All DreamHost accounts have the ability to add site statistics to any fully hosted website. The site statistics service tracks the following information:
- total number of requests
- traffic by domain
- traffic by file
- requests by browser type
- requests by the operating system
- requests by referring URLs
- and more
Make sure you are aware of the following before proceeding:
- Site statistics are not available on DreamPress plans or new accounts.
- Even on existing accounts, statistics will only display if they were previously enabled.
- Per GDPR, DreamHost stores HTTP logs by default for 7 days.
FAQs
Where can I view my site statistics?
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To view your statistics report, visit your domain name followed by /stats and enter a username and password when prompted. The credentials are the username and password you created for the statistics user.
If you’re using a CMS such as WordPress, you may need to add additional code to your site's .htaccess file in order to access the /stats login page. See this article for further information.
What do site statistics track?
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Visit this article for further details on what exactly is tracked and what reports are available.
How and when are site usage statistics generated?
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Statistics are generated once a day early in the morning, analyzing logs from the previous day. They should be available by noon of the next day, Pacific Time.
Explanation of results
Most of the results you see in your reports are broken down by date, requests, and pages:
- #reqs
- Represents the number of files that are requested during a page request. When a single page is requested, all content on that page is also requested. If a page has 25 images, a single page visit triggers 26 requests: 25 requests for the images and 1 request for the page.
- #pages
- Represents the entire page request, not the individual files within it. In the #reqs example above, the #pages value is 1 since only that single page is requested. If your statistics show 10 visitors and 40 page views, this means each visitor viewed 4 pages on average. More page views per visitor means people are staying on your site longer and viewing more content.
See this page for a further explanation of statistics results.
How to view and customize statistic reports
You can also create various types of reports, which are described in the following sections.
Customizing stat reports
To customize a statistic report:
- Navigate to the Site Statistics page.
- To the right of your site, click the Configure button under the Actions column.
- Click the Edit button to the right of one of the reports.
- Check the boxes of the report you wish to enable.
- If a report includes a Show or Show All option, enter a value or check the box.
- Scroll down to the bottom and click the Save Changes button.
Viewing domain names
To view domain names instead of IP addresses:
- Navigate to the Site Statistics page.
- To the right of your domain, click the Configure Stats Report button.
- To the right of a specific report under the Actions column, click the Edit button.
- Check the box next to Enable DNS lookups for numeric IP addresses.
You should start seeing domain names instead of IP addresses the next time the statistics run for your domain.
Viewing the raw log files
If you need to review the raw log files for your statistics rather than a statistics report, you can view them by logging in to your server via FTP or SSH. In your user's home directory, there is a folder named /logs. See the error log article for instructions on how to access this folder.
You can then find your statistic logs in the following directories. Make sure to change the username to your shell user:
/home/username/logs/example.com/http/analog/ /home/username/logs/example.com/http/hits /home/username/logs/example.com/http/html