Urchin 5

Urchin 5, the industry leading web analytics software, is used by millions of web sites worldwide. It analyzes traffic for one or more websites and provides accurate and easy-to-understand reports on your visitors - where they come from, how they use your site, what converts them into customers, and much more. Urchin is essential for executives, marketers, webmasters, and web designers.

The Urchin 5 Web Log Analyzer installs directly on your Virtual Private Server and creates HTML-based graphical reports of your web server traffic. It offers several special features such as multi-language reporting, E-commerce log reporting, and the ability to track up to 100 web sites (or profiles).

NOTE: Urchin 5 is available on the VPS v2 and MPS v2 products only.

Installation

To install Urchin 5, connect to your Virtual Private Server via SSH as root and run the following command:

% vinstall urchin5

At the end of the vinstall, your Urchin 5 installation should be fully licensed (with a permanent license) and ready to configure. Be sure to note the URL of the Urchin administration interface, as well as the Username and Password of the administrative user. You will need them to configure Urchin 5.

It is important to note that the main difference between our installation and "standard" Urchin 5 is that ours runs on the main Apache web server of each VPS, rather than on a standalone web server used by Urchin exclusively. This difference means that some administrative tasks might require minor changes to the main httpd.conf configuration file and a restart of the Apache daemons. Additionally, some sections of the README file, install.txt file, and the documentation at http://help.urchin.com may not be accurate for your Urchin 5 installation.

Configuration and Usage

Open your web browser to the URL noted at the end of the vinstall and log in as the administrative user. Follow the prompts to configure Urchin. Click on the help icon for help with individual configuration screens. Visit http://help.urchin.com for comprehensive documentation on Urchin 5.

NOTE: The vinstall configures Urchin 5 to listen on web port 9876. This port may be blocked by firewalls. See instructions below to change the port.

Log Sources Important Information!
Urchin 5 reads and manages log files differently from Urchin 3. It doesn't matter if Urchin 5 reads the same log files more than once--Urchin's log tracking capability ensures that only new hits are processed. Additionally, Urchin 5 can read backup log files that have been compressed with zip, gzip and bzip2.

The "Archive-Compress," "Archive - No Compression" and "Delete" Log Destiny radio buttons (on the Advanced Settings tab of the Log Manager) will not function on your VPS v2 account. On Unix systems, Apache log files are owned by root and written directly by Apache, which means Urchin cannot compress or delete old Apache log files after processing them. You should use standard Unix log management utilities to perform these tasks. (See Managing Web Server Log Files for information about rotating those files.)

Additionally, when specifying log sources in the Urchin 5 administration interface, be sure to add a wildcard "*" at the end of the name of the log files! This will ensure that no log entries are missed, even if they are in rotated or compressed files.

Example

Instead of specifying

/usr/local/apache/logs/access_log

as the log source, add an asterisk ("*") at the end:

/usr/local/apache/logs/access_log*

For more information, see Log Rotation Best Practices on the Urchin web site.

Changing the Urchin Server Port Number

The VPS v2 vinstall configures Urchin 5 to listen on web port 9876 by adding a VirtualHost entry at the end of the Apache configuration file /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf.

To change the port number, modify the "Listen 9876" and nearby <VirtualHost> lines at the bottom of httpd.conf.

NOTE: The Urchin web configuration interface has a field (on the Server Settings tab of the Configuration > Settings > Access settings page) for changing the port number. However--because the vinstall configures Urchin 5 as a virtual host of the main Apache configuration--that interface is non-functional.

Working with Affiliations

If you configure Urchin 5 to use Data Center Mode and decide to use "Affiliations," you should create the Affiliations before creating any Profiles, Log Sources, Users or Groups that are associated with the Affiliations. (See Working with Affiliations for more information.)

Upgrading from Urchin 3

Because Urchin 5's internal workings and data formats are not compatible with Urchin 3, an existing Urchin 3 installation cannot be upgraded by simply installing Urchin 5 in its place. You should continue using Urchin 3 while configuring Urchin 5. Then, after configuration of version 5 is complete, deactivate Urchin 3 log processing and enable Urchin 5 scheduling. (See Upgrading Urchin 3 for more information.)

In the upgrade documentation, you will be told to use a migration script called "u3importer". Please note that this tool may be useful in migrating Urchin 3 data into Urchin 5; however, read the documentation thoroughly and use this tool with caution. u3importer is known to have problems and may not completely migrate your data or you may be running an Urchin configuration that cannot be migrated directly into Urchin 5.

Documentation

See the Urchin Documentation Center for more documentation.