Piwik the open source alternative to Google analytics Pt1
Piwik is a free site statistics analyzer which is a valid alternative to the well known Google analytics product. Being open source means that not only is it free but you have the freedom to modify the underlining code to your specific requirements. I’ve been testing this product since 2009 and I must say the latest stable release (v1.1.1) on the 4th Jan 2011 is quite impressive in terms of graphics and functionality.
Like Google analytics Piwik is a javascript tag based solution which as the advantage of tracking real visitors rather than automated bots but has the drawback that any visitor to your site with JavaScript disabled (certain mobile phones for example) would not be tracked at all, there is a solution to this using an Simple Image tracker (inside a no-script tag) which in testing tracked correctly a normal browser with JavaScript disabled but with a Nokia E71 mobile smartphone it was completely invisible.
In my next post I will go into detail all the features of Piwik, in the meantime check out their site and download it at piwik.org
What’s more, Google Analytics users can migrate their historical analytics data to Piwik using google2piwik script – http://clearcode.cc/offer/open-source-projects/google2piwik/
Maciej
20 Feb 11 at 1:05 pm
thanks for the tip, will come in handy for sure for anyone looking to make the move from Analytics to Pwik
chris
20 Feb 11 at 10:40 pm