Logs and Traffic Analytics#
The Logs page in HostsNix is your window into understanding what’s happening on your websites. It provides comprehensive access to website access logs, error logs, real-time traffic analytics, and log management tools — all in one place.
All Websites Overview#
When you first open the Logs page, you see a summary dashboard across all your websites. This overview includes:
- Total Requests — Aggregate number of HTTP requests across all sites
- Unique Visitors — Total unique IP addresses that accessed your sites
- Total Log Size — Combined size of all access and error log files
Below the summary cards, each website is displayed in a row showing its individual stats — requests, visitors, and log sizes. This makes it easy to quickly identify which sites are getting the most traffic or generating the most errors.
Click on any website row, or use the dropdown filter at the top, to drill into the detailed view for that specific site.
Per-Website Log View#
When you select a specific website, you’ll see five tabs:
Overview Tab
A quick summary of the selected website’s activity: total requests, unique visitors, error count, and bandwidth usage for the current period.
Traffic Tab
Detailed traffic analytics parsed from access logs, including:
- Top Pages — Most visited URLs on your website. Useful for understanding what content is most popular
- Top IP Addresses — Most active visitors. Can help identify bots, scrapers, or potential attacks
- HTTP Methods — Breakdown of GET, POST, PUT, DELETE requests. An unusual number of POST requests could indicate a brute-force attack
- Status Codes — Distribution of response codes (200 OK, 301 Redirect, 404 Not Found, 500 Server Error). High 404 counts may indicate broken links; high 500 counts need investigation
- User Agents — Browser and bot identification
Time period filters let you view data for the last hour, today, 7 days, or 30 days.
Access Logs Tab
View raw access log entries in real-time. Each entry shows the timestamp, client IP, HTTP method, URL path, status code, response size, and user agent. You can search and filter log entries to find specific requests.
Common use cases for access logs:
- Debugging 404 errors to find broken links or missing resources
- Identifying which pages get the most traffic
- Spotting suspicious access patterns (e.g., repeated requests to
/wp-login.php) - Verifying that search engine bots are crawling your site correctly
Error Logs Tab
Displays PHP errors, Nginx errors, and application-level errors. Error logs are essential for troubleshooting when:
- Your website shows a blank white page (“White Screen of Death”)
- You see a 500 Internal Server Error
- PHP scripts are failing silently
- A recent update broke something
- Plugin or theme conflicts are occurring
Error entries include the error level (Warning, Fatal Error, Notice), the file and line number where the error occurred, and the error message.
Management Tab
Log files grow continuously and can consume significant disk space over time. The Management tab lets you:
- Rotate Logs — Archives the current log files and starts fresh ones. The archived logs are compressed and timestamped
- Download Logs — Download access or error log files for offline analysis
- Clear Logs — Delete log files to free disk space
Automatic log rotation is also configured via cron jobs, running weekly by default to prevent log files from growing too large.
Interpreting Status Codes#
Understanding HTTP status codes in your logs helps you diagnose issues quickly:
- 200 — OK. The request was successful
- 301 — Permanent redirect. Often from HTTP to HTTPS or www to non-www
- 302 — Temporary redirect. Usually from login redirects or form submissions
- 304 — Not modified. The browser used its cached version — this is good for performance
- 403 — Forbidden. The server refused the request, usually due to directory permissions
- 404 — Not found. The requested URL doesn’t exist. Check for typos or deleted content
- 500 — Internal Server Error. A PHP error occurred. Check error logs for details
- 502 — Bad Gateway. PHP-FPM may have crashed or timed out. Check PHP settings and error logs
- 503 — Service Unavailable. The server or PHP-FPM is overloaded