One of the neat features of WSS 3.0 is the new reporting
capabilities. I'm going to go over enabling this usage reporting in
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (note: this configuration is
different if you're using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007).
First what you'll need to do is create a folder somewhere on your
SharePoint server where the usage logs will reside. If you're super
anal retentive like me, you'll probably have a small, dedicated
partition just for logfiles - this is where you should put your new
folder (name it something to the effect of WSSUsageLogs or
SharePointUsageLogs). Be sure the ASPNET and Network Service
account have full access to this folder.
Next you'll need to open up the Central Administration site on your
SharePoint server (Start --> Administrative Tools -->
SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration). Once open, click on the
Operations tab. You should see a "Logging and Reporting" section on
the Operations page, and under that a "Usage analysis process"
link. Click on that link.
On the Usage Analysis Processing page, check the "Enable logging"
checkbox, put in the path to the log folder you created, and set
the "Number of log files to create:" to 1. Finally check the
"Enable usage analysis processing" checkbox and set the Start and
End times for the processing to occur - this should be non-peak
hours, either before or after you run your SharePoint backups...
you do back up your SharePoint site, right (If not, more on that
soon!).
After setting up logging in the Central Administration, you can
then view a site's usage report by visiting the site, clicking Site
Actions, Site Settings, and then the "Site usage report" link on
the Site Settings page (you must have administrative priviledges to
do this). Once on the Site Usage Report page, you can view such
nifty things as metrics showing the most-viewed pages/files as well
as how often individual SharePoint users are visiting your site.
Enjoy!