More sexy performance stuff you should check out. By examine the web server logs you see exactly what your web server is doing and can identify all sorts of performance problems that page-based performances tools like YSlow or Page Speed cannot see.

Last time we covered the most important question you should ask a hosting provider: What control do I have over the web server. This time we will be showcasing another important question to ask a hosting provider:

What access do you provide to web server logs?

The main reason you want access to log files from the web server is to learn how visitors are accessing your content. This will reveal a wealth of knowledge about the raw traffic patterns of your web application and expose various performance issues and limitations. Often these performance issues will not be detected by page-based performance tools like Yahoo’s YSlow or Google’s Page Speed.