What do the web server log files look like?

The access logs you download from your hosting package are in the standard Apache combined format. We add the virtual host – your domain name – at the start of each line, but the logs look like this:

[Your Domain] [User’s IP Address] [Identity of User] [User Name] [Time Request Was Processed] [Request Line From Client] [Status Code Sent From Server] [Size of Response in Bytes] [Referring Page to this URL] [Browser Identification String]

If one of those items is not found for the log, it is replaced by a dash ( - ). So, as an example, if the Google robot were to visit your site, that line on your log would look like:

your-domain.com 179.111.61.143 - - [30/Oct/2014:10:15:00 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 21082 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

The error logs you download from your hosting package are in the standard Apache error log format. This shows you any errors the server has in processing requests.  We add the virtual host – your domain name – at the start of each line, but the logs look like this:

[Your Domain] [Time Error Was Processed] [Severity of Error] [User’s IP Address] [Error Message] [File-System Path of Requested File]

If a file on your server is not configured properly, that line on your error log would look like:

your-domain.com [30/Oct/2014:10:15:00 +0000] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] client denied by server configuration: /export/home/live/ap/htdocs/test

Most errors and identification strings can be looked up via a search engine. However, if you have any questions, please raise a Support Ticket with the Customer Services team.