Apache Logs can be a valuable tool for finding subscriber counts for websites. This article will show how to find RSS subscriber counts through Apache Logs. First, we need to create a new log file called “www-data/www-apache-logs/www-apache-1.4.2.log” and populate it with the following information: Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2009 12:00:00 GMT Time: Tue, 01 Apr 2009 12:01:01 GMT Log Level: INFO $ apache_log_level = “INFO” $ apache_log_filename = “www-data/www-apache-logs/www-apache-1.4.2.log” $ apache_log_format = “%Y%m%d %H%M%S” $ apache_log_filesize = 1024 $ apache_maxage = 3600 # Max age in days for Apache logs (in days) # (in seconds)

It turns out that most of the bigger feed readers like Google Reader and Netvibes will actually show you the count during the request for your feed. All you have to do is take a peek inside your access log files.

First you’ll need to locate your apache logfile, which is normally called access_log or access.log. The location for this file will vary greatly based on distribution and your hosting provider. Here’s a couple of places to start, but you might have to look around.

Ubuntu default:

/var/log/apache2/access.log

MediaTemple DV default:

/var/www/vhosts//statistics/logs/access_log

Dreamhost default:

~/logs//http/access.log

Now that you’ve found the logfile, it’s a simple matter of running it through grep for the keyword “subscribers”, which most of the feed readers use to show the subscriber count. You could just use the simplest command:

Or, if you wanted to find the subscribers for a particular feed, you could run it through a second grep to restrict to just that rss feed.

Here’s an example of what that brings back on my personal blog (which I should really update more)

Note the bolded text that shows I have all of 56 subscribers from those three online feed readers. Mysticgeek has a lot more from Google alone:

Perhaps I should take a cue from him and start updating my personal blog… but then I would have less time for writing articles.