Take Action TODAY To Protect Your Website Logs

My cPanel configuration gives me the option to save my websites’ raw action logs at the end of every month. It saves them in a folder in a non-publicly accessible part of my web server.

Setting this up is quite simple; you simply log in to your cPanel, click on the “Raw Access Logs” link, and there should be an option to automatically archive your logs at the end of every month.

[CORRECTION: If you are using cPanel 10, you'll need to click on the "Raw Log Manager" link to set this up; the "Raw Access Logs" will only allow you to download the raw access log for the current month, up to the current time. If you are using cPanel 11, you can do both from the "Raw Access Logs" link. --Tom]

With this option, all you need to do is create a procedure to log in to your account once a month (perhaps the 2nd or 3rd day of the following month) and download the logs. If you do this, you can also check the box to delete old logs when new ones are archived (although I recommend that you NOT check that box and simply delete the logs manually once you’ve downloaded them).

You can also keep them on your web server if space isn’t an issue. In fact, if possible, keep a copy on your web server AND download a copy; backups are a good thing…

Why should you do this? Because most web hosting companies only keep a few days worth of raw access logs. If you don’t save them, nobody will…

Aside from what you can do with these logs for tracking, testing, and statistical purposes, they may be worth their weight in gold should some type of security incident take place on your web server.

So check those boxes and start saving your logs.

And one more thing: today is January 30th, so if you don’t take action today or tomorrow, you’ll lose January’s raw access logs (assuming your web hosting company is like mine; my assumption is that most of them are).

Thanks for listening,
Tom