Bestdam Website Visitor Logger
+ Hit Counter

Features  &  Download

Features

Bestdam Logger is a CGI script written in Perl 4 that will run on both UNIX and Windows NT. (It may also run on the Macintosh platform but has not been tested on it.) Support for SSI (Server Side Includes) is required. It compiles counts and detailed information about visitors to your Website including:

• the date & time of their visit
• the pages they viewed
• their host domain
• their IP address
• the make and version of the browser they used
• the operating system they are using
• the URL of the site that referred them to yours

all in an easy-to-read columnar format. The log file layout is as follows:

Date & Time

Page Visited

ISP of Visitor

IP Addr of Visitor

Browser/OS of Visitor

Referring Site

Note that some Web hosting services and ISPs have started charging an additional monthly fee to have the "Referring Site" information included in the site logs. You can use the Bestdam Logger Deluxe Edition script to collect this information yourself bypassing this recurring charge.

In order to maintain the columnar format, some values may get truncated, but the less important information is what gets truncated. For instance, with the ISP information, the node the visitor was on may get truncated, not the domain name of the ISP. The Referring Site information is in the last column so it will not be truncated. This allows you to check the search keys if the referring site was a search engine.

With this information you can answer questions like:

• Who (via what domain) is visiting my site ?
• Where are they coming from (i.e. who's sending me traffic) ?
• What are the peak traffic times ?
• Which pages are the most popular ?
• Which browser is most often used to view my site ?
• Which search engines are "spidering" my site ?
• What search keywords did visitors use to find my site ?

Download

The Bestdam Logger is available for download below in both DOS/Windows ZIP format and UNIX tar format. Both of these files are less than 75K in size so they will download very quickly.

The download file includes the main script file (bdlogger.pl), the associated support files (logs, counter data, etc.), and a README.TXT file with detailed setup information.

The Bestdam Logger script will only send e-mail on NT/2K servers that are running the freeware Blat e-mailer. If you don't have Blat installed the script will still work. Just set User Variable 8 to No (0) to disable the sending of e-mails.

After downloading the file, you may want to take a look at the Setup & Installation page for detailed instructions on setting up Bestdam Logger. (Experienced CGI script users may want to check out the Quick Setup page.) This information is also presented in the README.TXT file included in the download files and top of the .PL file is also well commented with everything experienced CGI script users need to get the script up and running in minutes.

If you're new to using CGI scripts, please see the How To Use Your CGI-BIN page which features a detailed tutorial on everything you need to know about how to set up and use CGI scripts. If you're using an NT server, you may also want to check out our Windows NT / IIS page. If you have your own server, this page also features information on how to set up IIS on an NT/2K server to run CGI scripts.

NOTE:   If you experience problems getting the script to work, please see the Help page for a list of common problems and how to resolve them.

• Download the DOS/Windows ZIP file   (BDLOG3.ZIP   19K)
  
  
• Download the UNIX/Linux TAR file   (BDLOG3.TAR   72K)