I check once a fortnight-ish. Last time they were fine and showing 5-8000 unique hits per month. Today, I have almost 8000 for October, BUT only 307 for september, and Zero's down the board before that. My site has been up for 3 years, but there is only 2009 showing in the drop down menu for reporting period.

What's going on? Have I inadvertently deleted some file/s, and if so what can I do about it? Or is my host to blame?

I use Cpanel, if that makes any difference.

It may be that the host has decided to clean the server of old web traffic statistics. Over time they can use up some space. In fact, for most customers, these may make up the bulk of their space usage.

Contact the host about the issue.

Originally Posted by ~ServerPoint~

I believe you need to improve your marketing to keep get good amount of the traffic

Er - did you read my post? It's not the actual traffic that's disappeared, just the stats!

I do wonder why some people bother posting when they obviously haven't read the OP!

Something's wrong with Awstats. It works for one day and the next day it is malfunctioning. Hated it.

I suppose that is useful to check the statistics using other tools like google have.
But in any case that is the question to your web host. They should take care of that

I assume web hosting service provider will be able to answer that question for you only
They should have the logs

You said you did not touch that at all. So it could be someone unknown or your web hosting provider

Originally Posted by magicvw

It's not the actual traffic that's disappeared, just the stats!

If you've changed your AWStats config permissions or ownership, that can cause it to shut down. It's also possible they changed on their own. In either case, your host would be best for tracking it down, assuming they provide good support.

You can also add:

AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=1

To a custom.txt file in your AWStats folder (for most hosts). That will give you an Update Now link that might bypass the error.

Finally, I'd turn on Google Analytics so you can have some longterm stats that won't break, get lost or deleted. Information is power, so it's best to leave both running.

Originally Posted by magicvw

Er - did you read my post? It's not the actual traffic that's disappeared, just the stats!

I do wonder why some people bother posting when they obviously haven't read the OP!

I believe he means the logs/files Awstats creates behind the scenes.

Have you contacted your host about this? If they did clean out the old files they may have them backed up on another server.

Originally Posted by Brent2

Finally, I'd turn on Google Analytics so you can have some longterm stats that won't break, get lost or deleted. Information is power, so it's best to leave both running.

I agree with this. Google Analytics provides the best stats I have seen for a free. It's also very easy to set-up.

Originally Posted by sequencehosting

I agree with this. Google Analytics provides the best stats I have seen for a free. It's also very easy to set-up.

Just one thing:
That is based on the browsers which support java if they do not support that won't be counted at all.
Having 2-3 monitoring tools for the same web site and for the same statistics is really good idea. I believe that will help you understand the stats much better

That is based on the browsers which support java if they do not support that won't be counted at all.

javascript not Java

in fact,the diverse stastical monitoring tools is different,they have different advantage,you can try another one,comparing with the former tool,maybe sometimes the consequence is distinctive

Originally Posted by chrishirst

javascript not Java

If the browser doesn't support JavaScript it shouldn't be touching the Internet. If it has JavaScript disabled, well, that's a downside. That percentage is so small that it shouldn't affect your stats enough to matter.

If the browser doesn't support JavaScript it shouldn't be touching the Internet

Quick! Tell ALL search engines NOT to touch the internet!!