Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

Log Files (*)

What is the easiest way to make sense of my log files?

Do my site's log files count as space usage for billing purposes?

I've enabled log files, now where are they?

What are log files and how are they used?

My log file is huge and I can't remove it. What do I do?

How does log rotation work?

How do I enable my log files?

Here are the steps for enabling log files:

  1. Visit the Sites panel.
  2. Choose the site's "Short Name" to load the Site Information page.
  3. Choose "Enabled" for the access or error logs (or both).
  4. Choose "Save Changes."
  5. Wait a few minutes for the change to take effect.

If you're planning to measure any kind of statistics, enable the access log. For best results, enable it a week or so before measuring your statistics, as data from a longer period of time will produce more informative reports.

To find and debug problems with your site, enable the error log. If you ask for help with an error message received from your site, we will often ask what your error log says about it. If you do not have your error log enabled, we may not be able to help you diagnose some problems.

We also provide a rewrite log which can be enabled in the same way, but may be set to varying levels of verbosity. Do not enable the rewrite log unless you are having problems with RewriteRule directives in your .htaccess file, and disable it as soon as you fix them. Using the rewrite log will dramatically slow down your site.

Why aren't log files enabled by default?

The return code 304 shows up in my log files all the time. What is it?

How come the bytes in my site's access log file do not match the site's actual traffic?

How many old log files will be kept during log rotation?

What are each of the fields in the access log?

I rotated my log files, but the access_log.old file was not compressed. Why not?

What is the format of the error log?

What happens if I change log file compression techniques?