DWG | I'm Watching You
I just installed Piwik to track analytics on DWG. I'm going to detail my first impressions here, and then review it more in depth later.
So far, I really like it. It's a lot like Google Analytics, except I don't need to use any funky JavaScript that would stop the page from validating. Rather than using JavaScript code, Piwik has an "image" you can link in that would allow the page to validate. Also, it continues to work this way even when the user has JavaScript disabled. Very nice.
Installation was a snap. All I had to do after preparing nginx was unzip piwik into its new directory, and then run through a quick 8 step wizard in-browser. This set up the MySQL database, the superuser, a first website (this one, obviously), and then logged me into a very nicely designed front page.
The front page has a number of widgets one can arrange, add, and remove at a whim. You can see visitors by day, by hour, returning visitors, how long most people stay on the site, search engine statistics for multiple search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Alexa), what browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions people are using, where they're coming from, what continent or country their computer is in, and more. It's very featureful, but at the same time, the features seem to be accessible.
Since it's using the Google Analytics method of tracking statistics, and not scraping log files, statistics are updated in real-time. In fact, I plan to be watching it closely after posting this blog and linking to it on Facebook and Twitter just to see what it looks like. This also allows you to run Piwik on a different server than your websites since it doesn't need to read log files.
Anyway, after using it for 10 minutes, so far I would recommend this software package. Installation is as easy as it gets, it provides a wealth of accessible information, and looks nice to boot. In a week or two I'll come back and write a more in-depth Piwik review.
Posts: 2
Reply #2 on : Sun January 22, 2012, 00:44:18