I’m currently using an Italian hosting service, Webperte, for my Italian blog. The service is fine, except for one minor frustration: they don’t support ftp retrieval of the web server access logs used by log based web analytics systems such as Google’s Urchin.
The official solution is to log in to a hosting control panel, navigate a few screens and click on the log download links… a rather tedious process. Fortunately, the perl scripting language offers a relatively easy way to automate this process. I’ve hacked together a script, retrieve-hosting-logs.gz, which is designed to log in to a Parallels Business Automation control panel and download the two most recent access, error or ftp log files as desired. Feel free to use it at your own risk and don’t expect support you haven’t paid for 
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Primary Features
- Hard code username and password or specify them on the command line
- Choose to download access, error and/or ftp logs
- Can specify a download location in configuration options
- Can specify logon screen URL and logfile base URLs in configuration options
- The script will check to see if logs have already been downloaded – it will only download new logs
To use the script, you’ll need to have perl with the appropriate modules installed on your system. Download the file, unzip and rename retrieve-hosting-logs to retrieve-hosting-logs.pl
Feedback is welcome; enhancements will be considered especially if you supply a patch! Happy downloading and web analysis!
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Registration is now open for the next SEO Course (May 14 and 15) and Google Analytics Course (May 9 and 10) in Milan. Don’t miss the opportunity!
Sean Carlos is a web marketing consultant & teacher, assisting companies with their Search (SEO + PPC = SEM), Social Media & Digital Media Measurement strategies. Sean first worked with text indexing in 1990 in a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then he worked for Hewlett-Packard Consulting and later as IT Manager of a real estate website before founding Antezeta in 2006. Sean is an 
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