AWStats reporting files not found

[Bob Barr]

On a couple of my sites, I'm getting "File not found" reports on files that shouldn't be getting referenced. All of my css files are in subdirectory "css" and all of the href's for them are coded as:

href="css/client_name.css"

AWStats is reporting that a file named "css/css/client_name.css" couldn't be found. I've checked every HTML file on the site for that string and it's just not there. (I only reference the css file from HTML pages in the site's root directory.)

Another site shows that problem plus some of the ".js" files that I store in subdirectory "js" are appearing as not found for "js/js/name.js".
<added>
Again, a search of the HTML files shows no occurrences of "js/js".
</added>

Thoughts and possibilities?

While I'm considering adding new "css/css" and "js/js" subdirectories to suppress these errors, I'd much rather find and fix the cause rather than "getting around it".

[RiptideTempora]

Change css/ to /css/

Or if you're in http://domain.com/client/b/css/main.css, go with /client/b/css/main.css

[Bob Barr]

Originally Posted by RiptideTempora

Change css/ to /css/

Since the css folder is directly under the domain's root folder, is there really any difference between specifying "css/name.css" and "/css/name.css"? (If there is, I don't see why that would be the case.)

Or if you're in http://domain.com/client/b/css/main.css, go with /client/b/css/main.css

All of the HTML files are located in the root directory. They all directly access the css files which are all located in its "css" subdirectory.

[RiptideTempora]

It shouldn't matter, but for the sake of consistency add the / to the front and the errors should go away.

Some peoples' browsers do strange things.

[Bob Barr]

Originally Posted by RiptideTempora

It shouldn't matter, but for the sake of consistency add the / to the front and the errors should go away.

Some peoples' browsers do strange things.

Starting the link with a slash doesn't work. I had forgotten that, since these are addon domains, the domain's directory is already one level below my account's root directory. Starting the link with a slash makes the accessing start from the account's directory and, of course, the link fails.

Without the slash, the css subdirectory should be getting accessed correctly one level down from the domain's directory. The problem is that *something* is pre-pending the css and js links with the directory name an extra time. I just haven't been able to find out what that something is.

[J. H. Rasmussen]

Well it could be a bad web crawler or proxy server, not understanding relative path correctly(it happens).

It could also be a javascript trying to read another javascript or stylesheet(eg. writing out a script- or style-tag).

.htaccess could probably also create this problem, if you have rewritten some urls.

Just something to think about.

Anyway, maybe i could help more if you posted an url for one of the websites having this problem.

[HTMLBasicTutor]

How many of these errors do you have Bob?

I get people "fishing" quite often to see if I am running .... (pick something). Their attempts show up as 404 errors.

Another thought is someone trying to ripoff the site and their ripoff software isn't too smart therefore causing errors.

Sometimes they (whoever they are) also send false referrals to get you to look at their site.

[RiptideTempora]

Originally Posted by Bob Barr

Starting the link with a slash doesn't work. I had forgotten that, since these are addon domains, the domain's directory is already one level below my account's root directory. Starting the link with a slash makes the accessing start from the account's directory and, of course, the link fails.

It shouldn't.

/css should point to domain.com/css

As in, the root folder for that addon domain.

[ScriptMan]

HTML already posted my thoughts but adding a little to that; does AW show the requesting url? I know the other stats program does that. If these are direct requests I would ignore them as a fishing expedition.

If they are called by one of your pages than the funky browser or busy server might be the reason. I occasionally see pages loads where the CSS is not found and 10 seconds later the page loads fine. You ought to see what this VB page looks like when the CSS is not found.