OVERVIEW
Target audience: Administrators of virtual host websites
The Virtual Web Hosting service (VHost) allows official McGill research units and other groups to publish an independently designed website on a centrally managed system that is secure, reliable, easily recoverable, and offers a reduced risk of server downtime.
In this article:
Viewing basic site statistics
After you log in to the cPanel interface, there are several sub-panels within the main center panel. Scroll to the Metrics sub-panel for features that may be useful for analyzing site traffic:
- Latest Visitors: shows the last visitors to your site
- Awstats: uses the log files to create comprehensive graphs and tables of site activity
- Webalizer: similar to Awstats, but presents the information as a single graph
- Analog Stats: similar to Awstats, but through tables and simple graphs
Viewing your site logs
After logging in to the cPanel interface, there are two options for viewing your site logs: the Metrics sub-panel and the File Manager.
To view your site logs using the Metrics sub-panel:
- In the middle panel of the cPanel interface, scroll to the Metrics sub-panel.
- Select the Raw Access feature to download either of two sets of logs (as GNU zipped files):
-
- non-SSL traffic
- SSL traffic
Logs are constantly being processed, so you may only see a few hours of logs.
Note: If you have trouble with your scripts, select the Error Log feature and see the last 300 error messages.
To view your site logs using the File Manager:
- In the main panel of the cPanel interface, scroll down to the Files sub-panel.
- Select the File Manager feature. This will display a list of the files/directories that are part of your site. One of the directories will be logs. You can directly access the log files from there.
Note: You can go into the www directory in the File Manager. If you see an error_log file, you can hover over it, and a drop-down menu will appear. There are several options, but if you select View, you can see any errors your site may generate. This is useful for debugging buggy scripts.
Checking your VHost quota
To check your disk space usage and quota:
- Log into the cPanel interface.
- Go to the Statistics sub-panel on the right-hand side of the screen.
- Below the Disk Usage line are three numbers in the following format: XXX.XX Mb / YYYY Mb (zz.zz%):
- XXX.XX is the current amount of disk space used
- YYYY is the maximum amount of space allocated
- zz.zz is a percent representation of the disk space you have used
Two common reasons for running out of space are:
- your site is generating excessive log files
- a form is improperly configured, and mail is queuing in the mail directory
To learn more about managing your files and directories, see Managing files in your VHost.
If you feel you need more disk space, contact the IT Service Desk by submitting a General Request form.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES: