Piwik - Free Web analytics

To get detailed statistics on traffic to its own website on Google Analytics is probably the best known method. Of course with Analytics can represent not only the traffic to a website, but also more moderate further details, such as the visit duration, consider where or which browser the visitor to the site. Google Analytics we have also briefly looked at, but it was quite eccentric.

Whether you want to entrust this important information should be answered by each Google itself. Analytics alternatives are given in any case. One solution, which also still open source, I would like to describe here.

Piwik is an open source software. The nice thing is that Piwik is installed on your own Web server and leave the data collected thus never own server. I installed it today - and it's a damn good thing. Not only as a Google Analytics alternative, one should prefer to all cases considered.

Piwik is installed quickly(Required PHP version is only 5.1 and Mysql database.), Via a web browser, as you know it from Wordpress or other content management systems. Then you can start it had - as in this type of software is the case, on the site, which should be evaluated, incorporated a small JavaScript snippet, and already the tool counts the visitors and holds together a lot of other information. The dashboard is similar to Google Analytics, but is not quite as nicely designed.

The great advantage of Piwik: there are no data sent through the history of the world, Google will bundle and sell such information is not be able to use - it will remain exclusively in your hand on your Web server. It is also important to mention that there are no IPs themselves are displayed in the backend. These are only stored in the database. The makers of Piwik but they are already aware that in this respect in Germany is a confusing legal system.

In Piwik multiple users can be created, divided into simple Members - the statistics only can see. In addition, there are the roles Administrator and Super Administrator. There is also the possibility that any visitor can see the statistics, as with Piwik is even the case. Each user can customize his dashboard. With just a click widgets can be added and removed. Easy does it really do not - even though I at first glance, the link Add Widget is not noticed.

For Wordpress there is in fact a plug-in -- WP-Piwik. It accesses the data via API and represents a small selection of more or a few statistics in the WP as a backend.