Access Logs & Error Logs

How to check the logs and what to look out for

The LOGS are really useful if and when something happens to your website and you haven't got a clue what is the cause of the problem.

They can be quite bewildering at first sight, but fortunately there are some useful reference guides on the web.

The Access Logs

The Access Logs are a record of ALL traffic to your website, including that which:

successfully lands on a web page, and
that which is rejected (for example, by your website's WAF * if one is installed).

* WAF = Web Application Firewall.

A Status Code will tell you how the server responded to both kinds of traffic.

Example Status Codes

200 signifies SUCCESS.

301 signifies REJECTION.

There are lots of codes.

EXAMPLE: The Joomla! 0-day Hack in December 2015

The best way to detect whether or not your website was hacked during this infamous attack which affected many Joomla! CMS websites, was to browse through the Access Logs.

Looking for what?

For the following tell-tale sign of an attack:

JDatabaseDriverMysql

If you browse your Access Logs from 1 Dec 2015 to present and see the above text then your website may have been hacked.

Not sure? Seek help.

Give us a call and we will advise further.

We can also help clean up or rescue your website if an attack has compromised your website.

Contact Customer Support.

The Error Logs

The Error Logs are a record of instances when your website is malfunctioning.

EXAMPLE: Changing to PHP 7 for a Joomla! 2.5 website

We upgraded the PHP on a server hosting a test Joomla! 2.5 website.

Purpose: to see what would happen.

Result: broken site!

Conclusion: Joomla! 2.5 does not like PHP 7.

Here's an extract from the Error Log:

"AH01215: PHP Fatal error: Cannot use Joomla\\String\\String as String because 'String' is a special class name"

The code did not give us the solution right away.

But a quick search on the web threw up a few clues and we were able to deduce how to resolve the problem.

We therefore changed the PHP back to PHP 5.6.

Where to find the Logs

On some servers the LOGS can be found when you log into your Hosting Control Panel.

On others you will find them in the ROOT directory when you visit the server by FTP.

In the cPanel hosting control panel, select RAW ACCESS from the METRICS panel after signing in.

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Access Logs & Error Logs