Supported Log File Formats

Logaholic supports the following Log File Formats:

  • NCSA Common or Combined log files (default for Apache)
  • NCSA Combined including Cookie information
  • W3C Extended log files (default for IIS).

We also support a number of commonly used variations of NCSA formats.

To determine whether or not your Log File Format is recognized by Logaholic, simply enter the full path to one of your log files in the “Log File Location” field on the Data Collection tab in your Logaholic profile settings for either Log File Analysis Local or Log File Analysis FTP. A message will display below the input field telling you whether or not the file format is supported.

If the data in your Logaholic reports seems incomplete or doesn’t seem to reflect your site traffic accurately, the following signs may indicate that your log file format is not (completely) optimal:

  • Missing Keyword information
  • Missing or incorrect referrers
  • Missing crawler stats
  • Log file formats can be custom-defined in both Apache and IIS. If you are working with customed-defined log file formats, make sure the referrer information is specified in the format file.

Most log files are configured correctly, therefore you should only consider making the following modifications if your Logaholic reports are missing referrer information.

IIS Users:
Using the IIS manager, select the extended log file options and add a check to the box next to referrer and user agent.

Apache Users
Define the log file by adding or modifying the following line in your “httpd.conf” file:

CustomLog /your_path/access_log
“%h %l %u %t “%r” %>s %b “%{Referer}i””%{User-Agent}i” “%{cookie}i””

Often adding or modifying the following line in your “httpd.conf” file is enough to resolve most issues with incomplete data within Logaholic:

CustomLog /your_path/access_log “combined”

Each virtual host should have its own log file. On an Apache server, you will need to define a logfilepath/filename. Locate the Virtual Host tag within the file and place the logfilepath/filename between the tags for each website.


Creating a Custom Logaholic Log File Parser

If Logaholic cannot recognize or correctly analyze your log file and you cannot change its format, please open a support ticket and include a sample of your raw log file. We will gladly discuss creating a custom log file parser file for you.

If you are familiar with PHP, you can also create your own log file parser. Take a look at the parser files located in the in the “log_formats” subdirectory of your Logaholic folder. You can either edit one of the existing parser files or create your own. LooseApacheCommon.inc.php is a good one to start with as an example.

C:\wamp\www\logaholic\log_formats\LooseApacheCommon.inc.php