piwki script install

How To Install Piwik: Open Analytics Platform

After investing time and money into your websites and online brand, you’ll want to measure your Return On Investment (ROI), learn how to capture more leads, and track your visitors actions to get a better idea of how successful your new website actually is. The best way to do this is by using an analytics platform such as Google Analytics, Webalizer or AWStats. These are just a few examples of platforms available for free on the web you may have heard of, but today we’re taking an in-depth look at Piwik Open Analytics and why it may be the best choice for you!

What is Piwik?

Piwik is a free (GPL Licensed) downloadable web analytics software platform. It provides detailed reports on your website and it’s visitors. This includes search engine and keyword tracking, language and location information, what pages and files are most downloaded, and so much more. Piwik uses PHP and MySQL and has an easy installer, so it’s ready to be used on any standard web server and at HostUpon we have a one-click installer for Piwik.

Piwik Unique Features

  • Full control (and privacy) of the data
  • Easily accessible via API to integrate with your apps
  • Custom variables, segmentation, and manual queries to generate custom reports
  • Analytics for e-commerce
  • Advanced Geo-Location
  • Site speed and performance reports
  • and much more!

For a full list of features, visit Piwik’s website here: http://piwik.org/features/

Installation

One of the best parts of Piwik is that the installation process is incredibly simple and should take less than 5 minutes.

Piwik is a hosted web application so you’ll need to upload it to a server. Luckily, it’s easy to install on any server running PHP and MySQL (like most cPanel hosts). At the end of the installation, you’ll receive a Javascript tag which you add to the bottom of each page of your website (or into the global header). Easy-to-follow instructions are listed on their website.

The easiest way to install Piwik from your cPanel hosting account is by using Softaculous!  Simply login to your cPanel control panel and click the Softaculous icon.  On the left menu choose Piwik.  The last step is to click the Install link on the top menu and voila!  Piwik will now be installed on your website.

Updating the Piwik is even easier, just one click within the Dashboard and it will backup your configuration, and replace only necessary files with a new version from the Piwik server.

The Dashboard and User Experience

When you login to Piwik, you’ll see the standard Dashboard layout with “widgets” for tracking your website traffic, visitor map, visitors in real-time, and more. All widgets are fully customizable, and will open up in a larger window when clicked. You can create a custom dashboard for all of your Piwik users, that only includes what you’re interested in tracking, so you can focus on the important stats.

From the dashboard, multiple tabs are available along the top of the page which allow deeper research into a specific set of statistics. These include Visitors, Actions, Referrers, Goals, Engagement, Location, Real-Time, etc. There are also buttons for exporting your data in CSV, XML, or other formats.

Screenshot of the Piwik Dashboard

 

Thoughts and Piwik Review:

If you’re looking for a free, open source, and self-hosted analytics platform for you or your client’s website, you’ve come to the right place! Piwik is the easiest and best way to track your website’s success. From beginners to experienced web developers, there’s a good chance Piwik offers the features you need! It is constantly being updated with the latest security patches and features, making it extremely reliable and safe, in any production environment.

At HostUpon Piwik is included for free with all of our hosting plans.  Use our one-click Piwik installer inside the cPanel by clicking on the Softaculous icon.  From there you can install Piwik and start gathering statistics.

Overall, I’ve been impressed with Piwik since the day I started using it! What are your first impressions after using Piwik? Do you have a favourite feature? Leave a comment below!

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