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Utilities for searching, navigation, and monitoring site activity
Site Tools include utilities for navigating, searching and keeping up with site activity.
In particular, you have two highly configurable, automated site monitoring tools, WebNotify, to e-mail alerts when topics are edited, and WebStatistics, to generate detailed activity reports.
On this page:
Each Foswiki web has an automatic e-mail notification service that sends you an e-mail with links to all of the topics modified since the last alert.
Users subscribe to email notifications using their WikiName or an alternative email address, and can specify the webs/topics they wish to track. Whole groups of users can also be subscribed for notification.
The general format of a subscription is:
three spaces *
subscriber [ :
topics ]
Where subscriber can be a WikiName, an email address, or a group name. If subscriber contains any characters that are not legal in an email address, then it must be enclosed in 'single' or "double" quotes.
Note: The guest user WikiGuest does not have an email address mapped to it, and will never receive email regardless of the configuration of that user.
topics is an optional space-separated list of topics:
Users may further customize the specific content they will receive using the following controls:
*
in a topic name, where it is treated as a wildcard character. A *
will match zero or more other characters - so, for example, Fred*
will match all topic names starting with Fred
, *Fred
will match all topic names ending with Fred
, and *
will match all topic names. %STARTPUBLISH%
and %STOPPUBLISH%
markers within the topic. Examples: Subscribe Daisy to all changes to topics in this web.
* daisy.cutter@flowers.com
Subscribe Daisy to all changes to topics that start with Web
.
* daisy.cutter@flowers.com : Web*
Subscribe Daisy to changes to topics starting with Petal
, and their immediate children, WeedKillers
and children to a depth of 3, and all topics that match start with Pretty
and end with Flowers
e.g. PrettyPinkFlowers
.
* DaisyCutter: Petal* (1) WeedKillers (3) Pretty*Flowers
Subscribe StarTrekFan to changes to all topics that start with Star
except those that end in Wars
, sInTheirEyes
or shipTroopers
.
* StarTrekFan: Star* - *Wars - *sInTheirEyes - *shipTroopers
Subscribe Daisy to the full content of NewsLetter
whenever it has changed.
* daisy@flowers.com: NewsLetter?
Subscribe buttercup to NewsLetter
and its immediate children, even if it hasn't changed.
* buttercup@flowers.com: NewsLetter! (1)
Subscribe GardenGroup (which includes Petunia) to all changed topics under AllNewsLetters
to a depth of 3. Then unsubscribe Petunia from the ManureNewsLetter
, which she would normally get as a member of GardenGroup:
* GardenGroup: AllNewsLetters? (3) * petunia@flowers.com: - ManureNewsLetter
Subscribe IT:admins
(a non-Foswiki group defined by an alternate user mapping) to all changes to Web* topics.
* 'IT:admins' : Web*
A user may be listed many times in the WebNotify topic. Where a user has several lines in WebNotify that all match the same topic, they will only be notified about changes in that topic once (though they will still receive individual mails for news topics).
If a group is listed for notification, the group will be recursively expanded to the email addresses of all members.
Warning: Because an email address is not linked to a user name, there is no way for Foswiki to check access controls for subscribers identified by email addresses. A subscriber identified by an email address alone will only be sent change notifications if the topic they are subscribed to is readable by guest users. You can limit which email addresses can be used in WebNotify, or even block use of emails altogther, using the {MailerContrib}{EmailFilterIn}
setting in configure
.
Tip: List names in alphabetical order to make it easier to find the names.
Note for System Administrators: Notification is supported by an add-on to the Foswiki kernel called the MailerContrib. See the MailerContrib topic for details of how to set up this service.
Note: If you prefer a news feed, point your reader to WebRss (for RSS 1.0 feeds) or WebAtom (for ATOM 1.0 feeds). Learn more at WebRssBase and WebAtomBase, respectively.
Related topics: Main.WikiUsers, UserRegistration
WebSearch is a flexible search facility, part of the core feature set. WebSearchAdvanced offers more options, including:
See also: SearchHelp for help; Macros and FormattedSearch for including hard-coded searches in text.
To check for the most recently edited topics while on-site, use the WebChanges link, usually located in the toolbar. It lists the most recently modified topics, newest first, along with the first couple of lines of the page content.
This is simply a preset SEARCH
. The number of topics listed by the limit
parameter.:
%SEARCH{ "1" web="%BASEWEB%" type="query" nosearch="on" order="modified" reverse="on" limit="50" }%
You can point your news reader at WebRss and WebAtom to find out what is new in a web. WebRssBase and WebAtomBase have the details. Like WebChanges, this is based on a %SEARCH{}%
.
WebIndex lists all web topics in alphabetical order, with the first couple of lines of text. This is simply a preset SEARCH
:
%SEARCH{"1" scope="topic" type="query" nosearch="on" }%
See SiteToolStatistics for detailed configuration and customization information.
Statistics of visits to pages in a web can be generated manually or automatically, on a per-web basis. Statistics are compiled as a running total for each month.They include totals for Topic Views, Topic Saves, Attachment Uploads, Most Popular Topics with number of views, and Top Contributors showing total of saves and attachment uploads. Statistics from previous months are saved, and a new row is written to the table at the beginning of each month.
%STATISTICSTOPIC%
Statistics are compiled by a script that processes the Foswiki event log. The script can be run two ways:
cron
job The following form can be used to run statistics and create the WebStatistics topics for selected or all webs.
Note: The current user - WikiGuest must have access rights to read/write the WebStatistics topics, and if missing, must have authority to create the WebStatistics in the selected webs.
Foswiki generates an event log which is used by the statistics script
{Log}{Dir}
setting in configure Logging and Statistics
tab. events.log
Old events are archived as events.<year><month>
working/logs/events.log
| <time> | <wikiusername> | <action> | <web>.<topic> | <extra info> | <IP address> |
| 23 Dec 2024 - 09:15 | WikiGuest | view | WebRss | | 66.124.232.02 |
Script | Action name | Extra info |
---|---|---|
attach | attach | when viewing attach screen of previous uploaded attachment: filename |
changes | changes | |
edit | edit | when editing non-existing topic: (not exist) |
login | login | Authentication failure or success |
manage | rename | when moving topic: moved to Newweb.NewTopic |
manage | move | when moving attachment: Attachment filename moved to Newweb.NewTopic |
manage | renameweb | when renaming a web: oldweb moved to newweb |
rdiff | rdiff | higher and lower revision numbers: 4 3 |
register | regstart | WikiUserName, e-Mail address, UserName: user attempts to register |
register | register | E-mail address: user successfully registers |
register | bulkregister | WikiUserName of new, e-mail address, admin ID |
save | save | when replacing existing revision: repRev 3 when user checks the minor changes box: dontNotify when user changes attributes to an exising attachment: filename.ext |
save | cmd | special admin parameter used when saving |
search | search | search string |
upload | upload | filename |
view | view | when viewing non-existing topic: (not exist) when viewing previous topic revision: r3 |
n/a | logout | When authentication information is cleared |
{Log}{Action}
EXPERT setting in configure
. See also System.InstallationGuidePart2#EmailConfig
Outgoing mail is required for UserRegistration and for recent changes alert.
The preferred place to configure e-mail is in the configure Mail
tab tool (LocalSite.cfg
). The configure tool fully documents these setting.
The notify e-mail uses the default changes.tmpl
template, or a skin if activated by a preference setting.
mailnotify
also relies on a hidden file in each data/Web
directory: .changes
and a file with the Web name (one per web) in the working/work_areas/MailerContrib/
directory. Make sure both are writable by your web server process. .changes
contains a list of changes; The file in the working/work_areas/MailerContrib/
directorycontains a timestamp of the last time notification was done for the web.Both files are automatically created as needed.
Caution: Older versions of Foswiki, and especially TWiki migrations might configure e-mail in the preference settings topic.Make sure you delete that setting if you are using a SitePreferences topic from a previous release of Foswiki. These settings are no longer used and have been removed.
Parameter | configure (Current) | preference settings (Legacy) | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Global enable | {EnableEmail} | n/a | enabled | Globally enable/disable email support. |
Extermal mail program | {MailProgram} | n/a | '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -oi -oeq' | E-mail program used when Net:SMTP is unavailable |
Mail relay host | {SMTP}{MAILHOST} | SMTPMAILHOST | not set | Destination SMTP Server used to receive and relay email. Net::SMTP is disabled if this is not set. |
Mail sending hostname | {SMTP}{SENDERHOST} | SMTPSENDERHOST | not set | Hostname used to identify sender. Some SMTP configurations will require this. |
SMTP Password | {SMTP}{Password} | not supported | not set |
For Unix platforms: Edit the cron
table so that mailnotify
is called in an interval of your choice. Please consult man crontab
for how to modify the table that schedules program execution at certain intervals. Example:
% crontab -e 0 1 * * * (cd /path/to/bin; ./mailnotify -q)
The above line will run mailnotify nightly at 01:00. The -q
switch suppresses all normal output.
For ISP installations: Many ISPs don't allow hosted accounts direct cron access, as it's often used for things that can heavily load the server. Workaround scripts are available.
On Windows: You can use a scheduled task if you have administrative privileges.
The crontab command is used to schedule commands to be executed periodically.
Related Topics: AdminDocumentationCategory, AdminToolsCategory
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Topic revision: r1 - 2024-12-23, UnknownUser
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