We are going to look at some of the statistics software you can use to monitor your web site from a traffic point of view. There are several options you can use such as:
Hosting provider statistics
Separate software installations on your hosting account
External services such as StatCounter and Google Analytics
Web Analytics software installed on a PC
You may not even know it, but your hosting provider also keeps a tab on your web site! Most hosting providers will give you the stats from Webalizer and you might even think that it shows how much traffic you got. Here is a screenshot for one of my web sites:
But the problem with Webalizer is that it does not exclude your own visits to the web site, and it also counts the hits, files, and visits relating to your administration panel.
Therefore, if you have been working hard on your site, you will see a spike in the traffic it reports, which you can explain the day after, but will have forgotten about after a few months...