How to Monitor Website Usage and Logs in ISPConfig

This guide shows you how to keep an eye on how a website on your Noiz hosting account is being used, and how to read its logs, all from the ISPConfig control panel. You will learn where to find traffic figures (sometimes called bandwidth or usage), disk space usage (also called quota or webspace), the raw web server logs (the access log and error log), and the daily visitor statistics reports produced by AWStats, GoAccess or Webalizer. It is written for Noiz clients managing a website through ISPConfig. The final section covers the Monitor module, which shows server-wide health and system logs and is only available if you log in with a server administrator account, as you would on a self-managed Noiz server.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against ISPConfig 3.3.1p1, the version Noiz runs. This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against ISPConfig. It complements, and does not replace, the official ISPConfig documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• Site Statistics (ISPConfig Documentation): the current guide to enabling website statistics reports and viewing them at the site's stats address.
• ISPConfig User Manual: the official manual, whose Statistics and Monitor chapters document these screens field by field.
• ISPConfig Documentation overview: the index of all official ISPConfig documentation.

Prerequisites

• You can log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
• At least one website on your account. If you have not created one yet, see How to Create a Website in ISPConfig.
• To download the raw log files, an FTP or SFTP client such as FileZilla or WinSCP, and the FTP or shell login details for the website.
• To use the Monitor module, a server administrator login. Standard shared hosting client logins do not show the Monitor module, and that is normal.

What You Can Monitor

ISPConfig gives you four different views of how a site is being used, and it helps to know which one answers which question:

• Usage tables under the Sites module Statistics menu: read-only figures for web traffic, FTP traffic, disk quota and database quota.
• The Statistics tab on an individual website: where you switch on the daily visitor statistics reports and set their password.
• The stats reports themselves, produced once a day by AWStats, GoAccess or Webalizer and viewed in a browser.
• The raw web server logs (the access log and error log), downloaded from the website's log directory over FTP or SFTP.

Each of these is covered in its own section below.

View Traffic and Quota in the Statistics Menu

The Statistics menu shows read-only usage figures for every website on your account. There is nothing to configure here; the panel simply reports the numbers.

Open the Statistics Menu

1. Log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
2. Click the Sites module in the top navigation.
3. In the left menu, find the Statistics section and click the item you want to view, such as Web traffic.

Web Traffic

Under Web traffic you see the traffic served by your websites, in megabytes, for the current month, the previous month, the current year and the previous year, with a total row at the foot of the table adding up every site. These figures are close to live: ISPConfig updates them roughly once a minute, so they are the best place to check how much bandwidth a site is using right now.

FTP Traffic

Under FTP traffic you see the same style of table for data transferred over FTP, again for the current month, previous month, current year and previous year. Unlike web traffic, these figures are refreshed only once a day, so a recent upload or download may not appear until the next day.

Website Quota (Harddisk)

Under Website quota (Harddisk) you see how much disk space each website is using (the Used space column, in megabytes) alongside its Soft limit and Hard limit, the Linux user the site runs as, and the percentage of the allowance in use. These figures update every five minutes. The two limits work as follows:

• The soft limit is the level at which the account starts receiving warnings that it is close to full. It can be exceeded for a short grace period.
• The hard limit is the absolute ceiling. Once a site reaches its hard limit it can no longer write new files, which can stop uploads, log writes and content management systems from saving.

On a shared hosting account these limits are set for you by Noiz to match your plan, so treat this table as a way to watch how close a site is to its allowance. If a site is approaching its limit, tidy up unneeded files or contact the Noiz support team about more space.

Database Quota

Under Database quota you see the disk space used by each MySQL database on the account, in megabytes, against the quota set for it. Like the website quota, these figures update every five minutes.

Backup Stats

If your plan includes backups, a Backup Stats item appears, showing the backup interval, how many backup copies exist for each site and the space they take up. These counts and sizes are read from the backup records each time you open the page, so they move as soon as a backup job finishes rather than waiting for a daily refresh. Because backup jobs normally run overnight, in practice that still means the figures change about once a day.

Check Usage for a Single Website

To focus on one site rather than the whole account, open the website itself:

1. In the Sites module, click Website in the left menu.
2. Click the domain you want in the list.

The website form opens with tabs across the top: Domain, Redirect, SSL, Statistics and, where backups are enabled for the site, Backup. A further Options tab appears only for administrators, and for resellers where the panel has been configured to allow it. The disk space limit for the site is shown on the Domain tab (the Harddisk Quota field). On a shared hosting account this field is set by Noiz to match your plan, so you can read it but not raise it yourself.

Turn On Web Statistics Reports

Separately from the raw usage tables, ISPConfig can build visitor statistics reports for a site once a day. These reports show visits, page views, referrers, browsers and similar detail in a browser-friendly format. They are switched on per website and are password-protected.

Enable the Reports and Set a Password

1. In the Sites module, open Website and click the domain you want.
2. Click the Statistics tab.
3. In the Webstatistics program drop-down, choose AWStats, GoAccess or Webalizer. Choosing None disables the reports.
4. Type a password in the Set Webstatistics password field and confirm it in Repeat Password, or use the Generate Password button. The username is fixed by ISPConfig as admin and cannot be changed.
5. Click Save.

Setting the password is not optional. ISPConfig always password-protects the stats folder, but it only writes the login file once a password has been saved, so switching the reports on and leaving the password blank produces a stats page that nobody can open.

The reports are generated once a day by a job that runs just after midnight on the server, so a site you have just enabled will show no data until the following day.

View the Reports

Once the first report has been built, open a browser and go to the stats folder of the site. Using yourdomain.com as an example domain, that is:

https://yourdomain.com/stats/

When prompted, log in with the username admin and the webstatistics password you set on the Statistics tab. As a shortcut, each domain name in the Web traffic table is itself a link to that site's stats page, so you can open it from the panel without typing the address.

Access the Raw Web Server Logs

For a request-by-request record of what the web server did, use the raw logs rather than the statistics reports. Every ISPConfig website has a log directory in its home folder, sitting alongside the web folder that holds your site content. The two main files are:

• access.log: one line for every request the site received, including the visitor's address, the page or file requested, the response code and the size of the response. This is where you check what is being requested and by whom.
• error.log: messages the web server and PHP wrote when something went wrong, such as missing files, permission problems or script errors. This is the first place to look when a page shows an error.

Alongside the current files you will usually find earlier days already archived: access logs as dated files named for the day they cover, such as 20260726-access.log.gz, and previous error logs numbered error.log.1.gz, error.log.2.gz and so on. The log directory keeps only a limited recent history, since files older than the retention period set on the server are deleted automatically. This folder is also deliberately excluded from your website backups, so do not rely on a backup to recover an old log.

Download the Log Files

1. Open your FTP or SFTP client and connect to the website using the login details for that site.
2. Once connected, open the log directory in the site's home folder.
3. Download access.log or error.log (or one of the dated .gz archives for an earlier day) to your computer.
4. Open the file in a plain text editor. Compressed .gz files need to be extracted first with a tool such as 7-Zip or your operating system's built-in archive support.

The log files are provided for reading, so treat this directory as read-only: download and inspect the files rather than editing them in place.

Monitor the Server (Administrator Access Only)

The Monitor module reports on the health of the whole server rather than a single website: processor and memory load, disk usage, running services, available updates and the system logs. It appears in the top navigation only when you log in with a server administrator account, as you would on a self-managed Noiz server. On a standard shared hosting client login the Monitor module is not shown, and you use the Statistics menu and the site logs described above instead.

If you do have administrator access, click the Monitor module in the top navigation. Its left menu is grouped as follows.

System State (All Servers)

• Overview: a summary of every server. Each server sits in a coloured panel: green when everything is in order, blue for informational notices such as operating system updates being available, amber for warnings, and red for a critical failure that needs attention. Each status carries a [More...] link through to the detail behind it. The Refresh Sequence option lets the page update itself automatically at an interval you choose, and no refresh is the default.
• ISPConfig Log: the ISPConfig log, which records what ISPConfig itself is doing in the background and any warnings or errors. How much detail appears depends on the log level configured for the server.
• Jobqueue: the list of background tasks ISPConfig still has to carry out. An empty list means everything has been applied.
• Data Log History: a history of the configuration changes ISPConfig has written out, useful for establishing what was changed and when.

Server State

The Server to Monitor drop-down decides which server every menu item below it reports on. With a server selected, Hardware Information gives you CPU Info, and the Server State group reports on that one server:

• Overview: the same summary as above, for the selected server only.
• Disk Usage: free and used space per partition, the same information as the df -h command.
• Server Load: the current load averages, the same as the uptime command.
• Memory Usage: how much memory is in use, the same information as cat /proc/meminfo.
• Services: whether the web, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS and MySQL services are online.
• Update State: whether operating system updates are available.
• MySQL Database size: the size of every database on the server, with the client and domain each one belongs to.

The same group also holds RAID State and, where they have been set up on the server, links through to Monit and Munin.

Logfiles

The Logfiles group shows the last 100 lines of the server's main system logs without needing a shell session, including Mail Log, System-Log and ISPC Cron-Log, alongside Mail Queue and the logs of whichever security tools the server runs. These are server-wide logs and are separate from the per-website access and error logs described earlier.

Troubleshooting

• The stats page shows nothing or returns a not-found error: check that the Webstatistics program on the site's Statistics tab is set to AWStats, GoAccess or Webalizer and not None. Remember the reports are built only once a day just after midnight, so a newly enabled site shows data from the next day onwards.
• The stats page returns a server error instead of a login prompt: this is the signature of statistics being switched on with no webstatistics password saved. Open the site's Statistics tab, set a password, and save.
• The stats page asks for a password you do not have: the username is always admin, and the password is the one set in the Set Webstatistics password field. If you are unsure of it, open the site's Statistics tab, set a new password, save, and use that.
• FTP traffic or web traffic looks lower than expected: web traffic updates about once a minute, but FTP traffic updates only once a day, so very recent activity may not be reflected yet.
• The log directory is empty or missing in your FTP client: confirm you opened the log folder in the website's own home directory. A brand-new site may have very little logged so far. If the folder stays empty for an active site over several days, open a support ticket so the Noiz support team can check the log setup on the server.
• A site is near or over its disk quota: use Website quota (Harddisk) to confirm the Used space against the limits, remove unneeded files, and contact the Noiz support team if the site genuinely needs more space than the plan allows.
• The Monitor module is not in the top navigation: this is expected on a client login. The Monitor module is part of the administrator interface, so use the Statistics menu and the site logs instead.

If you get stuck at any point, open a support ticket with the Noiz support team and include the website's domain, which figure or log you are looking at, and what you expected to see compared with what the panel shows.