Do you turn off SERVER side stats?

[George]

I watch my server stats files take up more and more space and resources if I ever decide to read them (awstats, webalizer, etc) it takes quite a while for those programs to parse stats files that are several GB in size.

The files become so huge I wonder if it's even worth it having them there. You can't trust any of the server side stats because it counts whenever a PHP script, flash file, or image is called from a different server. So server stats are a bit useless.

I use google analytics even though I hate them because they only update like 2 times per day.

What do you do? If you use 3rd party stats do you turn off server side stats?

[defIed]

Don't use them, you won't need them.
Some log files fill up /var in a matter of days, and once /var is full apache & mysql go unstable

[jeremy860]

when I had my VPS, the logs would fill up all my space each month so I just stopped using them and started completely using remotely hosted stats. I like them better anyway.

[George]

edit... nevermind I got it. Thanks google.

[MaxS]

Yes, AwStats is a real pain.

[PGZ]

I just turn mine off on all my servers cause all they do is take space and then I get an email saying blah blah blah. If I ignore it the server slows to a crawl.

[rob]

We use cronolog to organize/rotate our logs daily on our server.. we keep the access/error logs. Every couple of days I'll parse them to make sure no one is hotlinking our files.

[NYCBORN]

Damn. I guess I won't be hotlinking Mr. Doe.

[miller2348]

We use cronolog to organize/rotate our logs daily on our server.. we keep the access/error logs. Every couple of days I'll parse them to make sure no one is hotlinking our files.

How exactly can you tell if someone is hotlink your files? I've only found people when I've been told.

[Curion]

Yes, the stats eat so much CPU resources that share hosting booted me last time although the site only used 5 gigs a day because of the cursors that I've created. Now I'm on VPS and when every time I did not kill the webalizer process, my VPS will go down because out of memory.

[Cyberkiller]

I disable them.

[pimpmaspace]

On most *nix installs /var is usally on it's own partition. Logrotate or newsyslogd (BSD) usally compresses these logs and rotates them deleting logs older then x amount of days.

Leave stats on, if you don't know what you're doing turn them off. I think their a very valuable resource to have though.

[minnseoelite]

ok i did have Awstats on my VPS but just turned them off today and now my site is loading just like new :)

One question though to make sure that everything is at top shape can I just go to the Awstats folder and delete all the files or do I also need to drop/empty anything in MySQL......

[MyspaceGeeks]

Of course I turn them off, I also turn off domlogs and error_logs as these take up alot of space and tend to lag your server.

If you do have server stats enabled, make sure you make it delete domlogs after the stats run, also - do not use awstats if you own a big site, the awstats update thingy lags so hard LOL.