How to access AWStats from outside cPanel

Sometimes it's interesting to be able to access awstats from outside cPanel, for example if you're hosting a client's website and you want them to be able to check awstats, but without giving them access to cPanel. You'd think that this would be an option provided by cPanel itself, but as far as I know it's not.

I've been doing some research and although various pages offer methods to achieve this, none of them fully worked for me (which tends to be the case when you don't really know what you're doing). Finally I've managed to get it working by mixing bits and pieces from different sources, so I've decided to post my solution here, in case it helps anyone else. Read the full text...

Posted 090330, in: English, Web
Tags: AWStats, cPanel