Can i split out client traffic v non-client traffic in WLE reports?

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allan maclean
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I'm trying to make a bit more sense of the numbers I'm getting from my WLE reports and one of the questions I get asked is whether we can split out client traffic to the website traffic versus traffic from non clients. Is there any way this can be achieved?
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Michael
The question is how activity from clients can be distinguished from activity of non-clients on your site and in your logs.

If your clients have to log in and their usernames are logged (so you can see them in the Visitors > Authenticated Users report), you can use the Authenticated User filter. You may also be able to filter visitors by IP if your clients use the same IPs.

If your clients access specific page, it is also possible to show visitors that accessed the specific page only, while it will work for the current visitor session only.
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allan maclean
Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply. I've looked at the Authenticated Users Report and there's only 2 columns in it. One just has '--' to the left of it and the other, which seems to have lots of users has what appears to be an IP address next to it but there are no actual meaningful client user names. Is it possible that our implementation of WLE could be set up differently so that we can capture user information in the Authenticated Users Report.

On your second point, I'm not totally sure what you mean - would it be possible to provide more explanation?

Thanks
Allan
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Michael
It is strange that an IP is listed as user name. If you analyze logs in Apache (or similar) format, you should check if the log format in the program is set correctly - the latest versions of the program allow you to specify custom format for Apache logs. Maybe the programs reads incorrect field as user name. If you wish you can send a sample log from your site to us at support@weblogexpert.com so we check it.

Regarding the second point - in some cases users need to access some page (e.g. login redirect page). In such case it could be possible to show statistics on visitors who accessed this page only. However, I don't think that it would be reliable enough because it will affect the current visitor session only. So a user may be logged in, but if he comes after some timeout or access the site from another IP, the program will think that he is a different visitor that hasn't accessed that login page.
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Michael
I've checked your log file. It indeed has a bit different format with server IP placed after the client IP. You can set such format in Profile Properties > Log Files. Select the "Apache" log format, click the "Custom..." button to the right of it, choose the "Custom" format and enter the following format:

%h %v %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"

In this case the program will analyze your log correctly.

However, the log doesn't contain visitor names so it won't help in this case. Unfortunately it seems that you won't be able to detect client/non-client traffic by analyzing this log file.

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