There are times when you talk to advertisers telling them how great your website or your blog is and then they are asking you for a proof. It’s a valid request especially if you are claiming a good amount of traffic per day or a demographic area of your visitors. AWStats is a good traffic statistic and it normally comes by default when you are in a shared web host account. Unfortunately, you can’t see the stat unless if you are logged in to your cPanel account.
There is a simple hack though to make awstats available to public through a simple PHP script.
The script to make AWStats public can be accessed on Josheli.com.
You simply have to create a PHP file (or just save the one from the Josheli.com), change a few lines on the script and then upload the script anywhere on your site:
$user = 'yourUsername';//your cpanel username
$pass = 'yourPassword';//your cpanel password
$domain = 'cravingtech.com/blog';//do not include 'http://' or 'www.'
$config_domain = '';
I also changed the dynamic_images variable to true.
$dynamic_images = true;
There doesn’t seem to be a way to limit what information can be hidden or displayed so you are going to give the advertisers the full stats. Whether this is a good or bad thing, I let you decide.
There are also some arguments whether AWStats gives a more accurate visitors statistics or Google Analytics’ but I’m not gonna discuss it here. Feel free to discuss it on the comments, though.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
An alternative to making your AWStats public is to use StatCounter, which provides the option to make their stats for you site active.
Regardless of the method you use, I feel it is important to show potential advertisers your site’s stats to help them make a more informed decision.
Thanks Paul. I’ll have a look at StatCounter. This AWStats “hack” gives too much information, in my opinion (such as your site keywords, ip addresses, etc)
Its better not share stats rather produce it to the advertisers or some other users when they need it.
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Hi,
I was just wondering. How trustworthy is AWStats? I have Google Analytics installed on my blog and so far for this month I’ve had only 90 visits while AWStats reads 514 visits. Is any explanation for the HUGE DIFFERENCE?
P.S: I’m not a huge fan of this hack. The last thing I need is giving someone a possible route to hacking my site.
Thanks
I actually did a google with this issue some time ago. AWStats include bots and also users with Javascript turned off (shouldn’t be too many) which explains the big difference