Title: Analyze shipped logs
Author: WordPress VIP Documentation
Published: November 25, 2020
Last modified: March 12, 2026

---

 1. [Logs](https://docs.wpvip.com/logs/)
 2. Analyze shipped logs

#  Analyze shipped logs

Analyzing shipped log files can provide crucial insight into an application’s quality
of performance and the ways users are interacting with site content.

The JSON-formatted log files are human-readable, but the logged data can also be
ingested into a log management solution application to provide additional analysis,
visualization, and understanding.

Some common log management applications for ingesting shipped data, depending on
the type of logged data and desired purpose:

 * [ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)](https://www.elastic.co/what-is/elk-stack):
   Filter and view.
 * [Splunk](https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/AddOns/released/AWS/S3): Search,
   monitor, and analyze.
 * [Data Dog](https://www.datadoghq.com/): Understand development issues.
 * [Botify](https://www.botify.com/blog/why-do-seos-need-an-seo-log-file-analyzer):
   Reveal SEO issues.
 * [GoAccess](https://goaccess.io/): Visualize and analyze.

## GoAccess

[GoAccess](https://goaccess.io/) is an open source tool that can be used to visualize
data for HTTP request logs from edge and origin to can gain deeper insights into
an application.

For additional information about GoAccess configuration and troubleshooting, refer
to the [GoAccess manual](https://goaccess.io/man).

**Prerequisites**

 * Log Shipping must be enabled for HTTP request edge logs and/or HTTP request origin
   logs.
 * Shipped logs must be downloaded from the cloud storage bucket and onto a local
   computer.

### Install

To install GoAccess, navigate to their [download page](https://goaccess.io/download)
and find specific instructions for the local machine’s operating system.

 * For **macOS**, using homebrew is recommended: `brew install goaccess`
 * For **Windows**, there is a choice between a specific Windows implementation 
   called [CowAxess](https://itefix.net/cowaxess) which provides an installer file,
   or using the Windows Subsystem for Linux and following the Linux installation
   steps.

### Prepare compressed log files for reporting

The shipped HTTP request logs are delivered as a series of gzipped (archived) JSON
log files. The shipped files must be unarchived before they can be parsed by GoAccess.

This example command demonstrates how to uncompress a gzip (`.gz`) archive named`
17_50_0.gz`:

    ```wp-block-preformatted
    gunzip 17_50_0.gz
    ```

The command above will remove the `17_50_0.gz` file and create a file named `17_50_0`
with the uncompressed content.

### Create and view a report

**Note**

If the local machine locale is not set to English, `LC_TIME` will need to be set
in order to process the logs:

`LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8" bash -c 'goaccess access.log --log-format=COMBINED'`

Additional formatting options will likely need to be set in the command line or 
in a GoAccess configuration file in order to successfully ingest the JSON-formatted
HTTP request log files.

Refer to the [GoAccess manual](https://goaccess.io/man) as the most accurate and
up to date reference for format options and configurations.

Use the `goaccess` command in a terminal to view a report.

In this example command `goaccess` is accessing multiple uncompressed log files,
separated by a space:

    ```wp-block-preformatted
    goaccess 17_50_0 17_55_0 18_00_0 18_05_0 18_10_0
    ```

To create an HTML report, run a command similar to the following example:

    ```wp-block-preformatted
    goaccess 17_50_0 17_55_0 18_00_0 18_05_0 18_10_0 > logreport.html
    ```

Opening up the `logreport.html` file will display the log information in a set of
graphs similar to the example screenshot provided below.

![](https://docs-admin-wpvip-com-staging-content.go-vip.net/docs-vip/wp-content/
uploads/sites/2/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-23-at-9.57.50-AM.png?w=1024)

An HTML report for HTTP request data generated by GoAccess

![](https://docs.wpvip.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-
23-at-9.57.50-AM.png?w=1024)

Viewing VIP logs in an HTML report generated by GoAccess

Last updated: March 12, 2026