Site Tools

Utilities for searching, navigation, and monitoring site activity

Site Tools include utilities for navigating, searching and keeping up with site activity.

In particular, you have two highly configurable, automated site monitoring tools, WebNotify, to e-mail alerts when topics are edited, and WebStatistics, to generate detailed activity reports.

WebNotify - recent changes alert

► Notification help▼ Notification help

   * daisy.cutter@flowers.com

   * daisy.cutter@flowers.com : Web*

   * DaisyCutter: Petal* (1) WeedKillers (3) Pretty*Flowers

   * StarTrekFan: Star* - *Wars - *sInTheirEyes - *shipTroopers

   * daisy@flowers.com: NewsLetter?

   * buttercup@flowers.com: NewsLetter! (1)

   * GardenGroup: AllNewsLetters? (3)
   * petunia@flowers.com: - ManureNewsLetter

   * 'IT:admins' : Web*

WebSearch - search the site

WebSearch is a flexible search facility, part of the core feature set. WebSearchAdvanced offers more options, including:

• topic title or full-text search
• regular expressions
• query search over form data
• search within web or site-wide
• index-style A-Z alphabetical listing sorted topic title
• many more

See also: SearchHelp for help; Macros and FormattedSearch for including hard-coded searches in text.

WebChanges - what's new

To check for the most recently edited topics while on-site, use the WebChanges link, usually located in the toolbar. It lists the most recently modified topics, newest first, along with the first couple of lines of the page content.

This is simply a preset SEARCH. The number of topics listed by the limit parameter.:

%SEARCH{ ".*" web="TWiki" type="regex" nosearch="on" order="modified"
  reverse="on" 
limit="50" }%

WebRss and WebAtom - news feeds on recent changes

You can point your news reader at WebRss and WebAtom to find out what is new in a web. WebRssBase and WebAtomBase have the details. Like WebChanges, this is based on a %SEARCH{}%.

WebIndex - list of topics

WebIndex lists all web topics in alphabetical order, with the first couple of lines of text. This is simply a preset SEARCH:

%SEARCH{ "\.*" scope="topic" type="regex" nosearch="on" }%

WebStatistics - site statistics

You can generate a listing manually, or on an automated schedule, of visits to individual pages, on a per web basis. Compiled as a running total on a monthly basis. Includes totals for Topic Views, Topic Saves, Attachment Uploads, Most Popular Topics with number of views, and Top Contributors showing total of saves and attachment uploads. Previous months are saved.

• You can create a WebStatistics link using %STATISTICSTOPIC%

Configuring for automatic operation

• You can automatically generate usage statistics for all webs. To enable this:
  • Make sure configure settings {Log}{view}, {Log}{save} and *{Log}{upload} in are set in configure. This will generate log file entries (see below).
  • The WebStatistics topic must be present in all webs where you want to have statistics. You can use the topic in the Main web as a template.
  • Call the bin/statistics script from a cron job, once a day is recommended. This will update the WebStatistics topics in all webs.
  • Attention: The script must run as the same user as the CGI scripts are running, which is user nobody on many systems. Example crontab entry:
    0 0 * * * (cd /path/to/bin; ./statistics >/dev/null 2>&1)
  • There is a workaround in case you can't run the script as user nobody : Run the utility tools/geturl.pl in your cron job and specify the URL of the bin/statistics script as a parameter. Example:
    0 0 * * * (cd /path/to/tools; ./geturl.pl mydomain.com /urlpath/to/bin/statistics >/dev/null 2>&1)
  • NOTE: geturl.pl will do a CGI request as the WikiGuest user, so if you use this workaround, the WebStatistics topics you are updating will have to be writable by WikiGuest.

When running from the command line or a cron job, you can pass parameters to the script like this:

./statistics -logdate 200605 -webs Userweb,Sandbox

Generating statistics manually by URL

• The bin/statistics script can also be executed as a CGI script, just enter the URL in your browser. Examples:
  • Update current month for all webs you have access to:
    /wiki/bin/statistics
  • Update current month for Main web only:
    /wiki/bin/statistics/Main
  • Update Mar 2025 for Main web:
    /wiki/bin/statistics/Main?logdate=202503
  • Update Mar 2025 for the ProjectX, ProjectY and ProjectZ webs:
    /wiki/bin/statistics?logdate=202503;webs=ProjectX,ProjectY,ProjectZ

Log Files

Foswiki generates monthly log files which are used by the statistics script

• The log file is defined by the {LogFileName} setting in configure
• The file name is log<year><month>.txt
• Example path name: logs/log202503.txt
• Each access gets logged as:
  | <time> | <wikiusername> | <action> | <web>.<topic> | <extra info> | <IP address> |
• Example log entry:
  | 13 Mar 2025 - 18:26 | WikiGuest | view | WebRss |  | 66.124.232.02 |
• Actions are logged if enabled in configure by the {Log}{action} flags
• Logged actions:

  Script	Action name	Extra info
  attach	attach	when viewing attach screen of previous uploaded attachment: filename
  register	bulkregister	WikiUserName of new, e-mail address, admin ID
  changes	changes
  save	cmd	special admin parameter used when saving
  edit	edit	when editing non-existing topic: (not exist)
  manage	move	when moving attachment: Attachment filename moved to Newweb.NewTopic
  rdiff	rdiff	higher and lower revision numbers: 4 3
  register	register	E-mail address: user successfully registers
  register	regstart	WikiUserName, e-Mail address, LoginName: user attempts to register
  manage	rename	when moving topic: moved to Newweb.NewTopic
  manage	renameweb	when renaming a web: oldweb moved to newweb
  save	save	when replacing existing revision: repRev 3 when user checks the minor changes box: dontNotify when user changes attributes to an exising attachment: filename.ext
  search	search	search string
  upload	upload	filename
  view	view	when viewing non-existing topic: (not exist) when viewing previous topic revision: r3

E-mail

Configuring outgoing mail

Outgoing mail is required for UserRegistration and for recent changes alert.

Foswiki will use the Net::SMTP module if it is installed on your system. Set this with the SMTPMAILHOST preference setting.

The notify e-mail uses the default changes.tmpl template, or a skin if activated by a preference setting.

mailnotify also relies on two hidden files in each data/Web directory: .changes and .mailnotify. Make sure both are writable by your web server process. .changes contains a list of changes; go ahead and make this empty. .mailnotify contains a timestamp of the last time notification was done.

You can use an external mail program, such as sendmail, if the Net::SMTP module is not installed. Set the program path in {MailProgram} in configure.

! * Net::SMTP can be easily disabled (if there is an installation error) by setting the SMTPMAILHOST preference setting to an empty value.

• You can set a separate SMTPSENDERHOST preference setting to define the mail sender host (some SMTP installations require this).

Setting the automatic e-mail schedule

For Unix platforms: Edit the cron table so that mailnotify is called in an interval of your choice. Please consult man crontab of how to modify the table that schedules program execution at certain intervals. Example:

% crontab -e
0 1 * * * (cd /path/to/bin; ./mailnotify -q)

For ISP installations: Many ISPs don't allow hosted accounts direct cron access, as it's often used for things that can heavily load the server. Workaround scripts are available.

On Windows: You can use a scheduled task if you have administrative privileges.

Site Permissions

• AccessControl describes how to restrict read and write access to topics and webs, by users and groups
• SitePermissions lists the permissions settings of the webs on this site

Help with crontab

The crontab command is used to schedule commands to be executed periodically.

• Wikipedia.org:Crontab - crontab documentation
• pycron - crontab for Windows