by Don Engstrom

If you run a serious web site, you are no doubt aware of the volume of information that your web server (Apache, WebStar etc.) gathers on your behalf. In addition to recording site traffic, your server's log files can contain information on your visitors' browser version, OS, which site they came from and what pages they visited at your site to name just a few. While this information is invaluable in fine tuning your site, in its raw form it is virtually useless. Enter FunnelWeb from Active Concepts, a cross platform log analysis program that sorts through millions of entries in a typical log file and presents the data in easy to read graph form.

Installation/Documentation: FunnelWeb is available as a download or on CD. The latter comes with a printed manual, and I would strongly recommend paying the extra $$ to have the printed reference at your side. The electronic version includes documentation in PDF format. The installation is straight forward although updating from 4.0 (which we had on CD) to 4.0.1 required us to reenter our registration information again, a minor annoyance.

Setup: FunnelWeb is good to go right out of the box. Simply drop a log file (FunnelWeb can read virtually all the log formats out there) and it swings into action using its default settings. To take full advantage of FunnelWeb however, you should take the time to adjust FunnelWeb's numerous settings. From the setting dialogue you can turn various reports on and off depending on your audience. FunnelWeb also offers a variety of filters to insure that certain data is either included or excluded. This allows you, for example, to exclude local traffic from reports. While the plethora of options may be overwhelming at first, they are well organized and documented in the manual. Taking the time to read through the manual is highly recommended. If you have your site's content spread over several servers, a process called clustering, FunnelWeb can combine their logs into a unified report. You will need to buy an additional licence for each server, however, and at $799 this can add up quickly. Conversely, if you host several sites off the same machine (virtual hosting) FunnelWeb can handle that as well.

FunnelWeb can format its reports in a variety of ways: HTML, HTML with frames (for easier navigation), PDF, Rich Text, and coma delimited text for importing into your favorite database or spreadsheet program. FunnelWeb includes an FTP client and can automatically download log files, process them and upload the reports to your server.

Performance: As you might expect, analyzing log files with several million lines of data can take a while. The time varies by file size and which reports you have selected. In relative terms, FunnelWeb seemed to do its job quickly. If you have turned on DNS lookups (to resolve IP addresses into domain names) FunnelWeb will cache this information for speedier processing on subsequent runs. FunnelWeb can also append new data to an existing report, handy if you run a daily analysis. FunnelWeb's output is clear and easy to read. The graphics (available as GIF's or JPEG's with several color pallets) are gorgeous.

Conclusions: FunnelWeb is available in both standard and "enterprise" versions at $399 and $1,199 respectively for the boxed set. You can save $50 by buying the download versions, but you will miss out on the printed documentation.

If you are running a small site and don't need the in-depth analysis that FunnelWeb offers, you can probably get by with one of the shareware alternatives, Analog for example. If you are running a professional site and want a serious analysis tool with polished and flexible output, FunnelWeb can't be beat!

Product: FunnelWeb Enterprise 4.0.1

Company: Active Concepts

Hits: Excellent professional looking reports, built in FTP client & scheduling features automate report generation.

Misses: Additional cost for cluster licence.

Rating: (5 possible)

Requirements: - Power PC, G3 or G4 processor - OS 7.6 or newer. OS X version planned - 64 MB physical RAM, more for larger log files. - 10 MB hard drive space.