I S S E L - FAQ - Setting up Option tabs

| | | | |

Setting up the Options tabs:

Below is a checklist to make sure all of your "default" Options settings are set up correctly.

Typical settings for most users:

Default domain - your Internet site (ie www.yourcompany.com)

Mode - Run the report on this machine using my own copies of the logfiles and database

Email - You must verify with your network administrator which type of email you're using, POP/SMTP or MAPI (MS Exchange) and check the appropriate button; then enter your email address, password (if necessary, again, ask your network admin), server name and email domain if relevant (some networks don't use this).

You can check or uncheck the bottom two boxes ("show tips at startup" and "Launch browser after a scheduled report") as desired.

2) Options/Log File tab:

Here, hit the Browse button and browse to the network/local location of your log files, highlight one, hit Open and you'll be back on the tab. Later (or now if you want) you can modify the end of the path to be a wildcard, for example from c:\logs\access.log to c:\logs\access*

Tip:You can put in multiple logfile paths in this setting, separated by a pipe ( | ) character to pull logs from multiple locations. This might look like:

\\computername(if over a network, otherwise C:\)\winnt\system32\logfiles\in*|\\computername(if over a network, otherwise C:\)\winnt\system32\logfiles\in*

and so on.

If you're using Microsoft IIS3.0, your logfile path with wildcard will likely look something like:

\\computername(if over a network, otherwise C:\)\winnt\system32\logfiles\in*

If you're using Microsoft IIS4.0 (which splits logs according to virtual server) the likely path will look like:

\\computername(if over a network, otherwise C:\)\winnt\system32\logfiles\*\ex*

If you're using Domino logs, make sure that you use a wildcard like that above as well as make sure that the "Log File Type" setting is set to "Lotus Domino 4.5 three-file system" and that your Access, Agent and Referer logs are in this location - this will enable Hit List to match up the Access log with the Agent and Referer logs, combine them and load them into the database.

If you have to FTP logs from a Unix (or sometimes NT) webserver, check with the administrator of that machine as to what is a proper "one-line" FTP request to put in under Options/Logfile - sometimes the syntax is in a different order than the suggested template here and requires the administrator's input to get it right.

If you are using SAMBA with a Unix machine (to allow connecting it to an NT network) you should be able to browse to the logs in the usual manner, set the wildcard and have the path retained for loading logs as you go.

If you are using your IIS webserver to log directly into MS SQL Server (instead of using ASCII text logs), you can use the "my server logs to an ODBC datasource such as Microsoft SQL Server" to pull the webserver records from that location. Make sure these four settings (username, datasource, password, table) are correct. You may need to check with your SQL Server administrator for more information.

3) Options/Database tab:

Here you can use the "my database is stored in a file" setting but leave the slot blank, in which case HitList will put the database in the default location (the file is called HitList.mwd by default and will be put in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Marketwave\HitList.mwd)

If you want to change this to put your database in a different location (i.e. because C: is low on space) you can hit the Browse button and go to another location, then type in a name in the "File name" slot on the dialog box, making sure that it ends in an .mwd extension - an example might be test.mwd and then hit Open and the path to this new database will be saved and used by Hit List to create the database in this location.

NOTE to Enterprise and Live users only:

You have the option of creating your Hit List logfile database in a different database format than the default (Access97). You can create an Oracle (v4 products only) or MS SQL Server database (3.5 and v4 products, performance enhanced in v4). This will require setting up the database and the appropriate ODBC connection, however. While Help is complete on how to set this up (see Help/Index/SQL Server/Using Oracle and Sql Server) you may also want to simply contact Marketwave tech support for any questions you may have in this regard.

4) Options/Updates tab:

Check the boxes "let old data enter the database", "lookup site names" (unless you don't have a DNS server), and "calculate page view duration"- almost everybody is interested in this information.

"assume one server" is only for those sites that are "load-balancing" (when you use multiple physical machines to host the exact same website and IP due to high traffic, probably does NOT apply to more than 80% of the sites out there) so leave this one alone unless that applies to you.

You will probably want to Store "Both detail and summary information" at the outset, until you have a feel for the data you want and don't want in the database, at which point you may want to revisit this setting.

"maximum request to request delay" - leave this at 15 minutes unless you have a special reason for changing it.

"update the database with all requests except those" - these settings are to keep this type of data out of your database altogether (as opposed to setting a Filter in the report you're running, which merely "hides" the data for the purposes of the report).

For example, if you don't want to track results to every graphic file on your site, exclude them under "with these URLs" as per the example (*.gif,*.jpg,*.jpeg)

You can also exclude IPs under "from the following IP addresses", this would be used for excluding internal hits from your organization (check with a sysadmin for the relevant IPs to enter). Check Help when on this tab for more information, or our Filtering tech support document.

These settings should be already entered, according to the data you put in during Setup. You may want to confirm that they are set up properly in the NT Services applet in the Control Panel. Usually (as per Setup) you have to give the Hit List Service Administrator-level privileges to allow it to get over the network to get the logs off the webserver, for example. See the Event Scheduler document for more information on this topic.

6) Options/Advanced tab:

The best way to determine your settings here is to hit Help to see what each setting is intended to do and how you should configure it. In most cases, the defaults are sufficient to allow most Hit List activity to take place as intended, but there may be a few nuances to your setup that requires adjusting these settings.

7) Options/Parsing tab:

Again, the best way to configure this tab (from settings other than the defaults) is to hit Help for a detailed explanation of its purpose. The default settings here work for the great majority of the sites currently in use.