Piwik on Janik von Rotz

Add Piwik tracking code to your Koken site

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 08:38:41 +0000

Sadly there’s no native Piwik plugin for the Koken photography CMS. However you can use another plugin the inject the tracking code to the footer of your site.

Install the HTML Injector plugin (Site > Settings > Plugin > Download Plugins).
Enable the plugin (Site > Settings > Plugin > HTML injector > Enable).
Setup the plugin (Site > Settings > Plugin > HTML injector > Setup).
Copy the tracking code of your Piwik site (Piwik > Administration > Websites > [site] > View Tracking code).
Paste the code into the footer field and save it.

Well done, your visitors are tracked now.

Source

lars-mielke.de - Piwik Integration in Koken

Results of my very important internet survey

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 12:29:11 +0000

First some backgroud informations about why I’ve published this kind of survey:

There are many pulbic survey tools, but none of them offers the as much features as LimeSurvey. To run surveys on my own, I’ve installed the LimeSurvey application on this server. For more insight of how the user interacts with the surveys I’ve added Piwik tracking for my LimeSurvey installation. To test the setup I’ve added a simple survey and posted the link to the SampleSize subreddit.

What started as a simple system test enraged people all over the world. I didn’t expect anybody to contribute to this survey, nethertheless I had great discussion about crocs and nickelback.

Some awesome quotes from the thread:

One second to read, a lifetime to choose an answer.

by zmonge

It was hard, but in the end, Crocs don’t make me bleed from the ears.

by brown3jh

CROCS. I WEAR THEM.

by monsto

Nickleback, no contest. I’d rather be forced to wear crocs for the rest of my life then listen to Nickelbutt.

by Voxel_Sigma

Results

Now I would like to present the results of this so important survey.

Obviously most people didn’t bother to finish the survey. I can understand that.

Finally we know that Crocs are worse than Nickelback.

Enable Piwik for LimeSurvey

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 10:30:10 +0000

This post is part of my Your own Virtual Private Server hosting solution project.
Get the latest version of this article here: https://gist.github.com/1d5043a9f40760716def.

Introduction

Piwik is an Open Source webanalytics software. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to integrate the Piwiks plugin for LimeSurvey.

Requirements

Installation

Navigate to the LimeSurvey plugin directory.

cd /var/www/<limesurvey>/plugin

Clone the Piwik LimeSurvey plugin.

sudo git clone https://github.com/SteveCohen/Piwik-for-Limesurvey.git PiwikPlugin

Copy the scripts from the sub folder in to the main plugin folder.

cd PiwikPlugin/
sudo mv ./PiwikPlugin/* ./
sudo rm -R PiwikPlugin

Add access rights for the webserver user.

sudo chown www-data:www-data -R ./*

Open your Piwik website //<piwik host>/index.php?module=SitesManager and optionally add a new site.

Copy the ID of the site where you want to store your LimeSurvey tracking data.

Open the LimeSurvey plugin manager //<limesurvey host>/index.php?r=plugins and click the settings icon of the Piwik for Limesurvey plugin.

Update the URL to Piwik's directory field with the url of your piwik installation //<piwik host>.

Add the ID of the Piwik site to the Piwik SiteId field.

Save the settings and enable the plugin.

Whenever a user access one of your suveys their actions are tracked with Piwik.

Why you should use Piwik instead of Google Analytics

Tue, 27 May 2014 14:06:01 +0000

Piwik is growing fast, it’s getting smarter and more reliable every day. Right now it’s the time to think about this alternative web analytic solution. As I’m using it for years I forgot the original cause that made me replace Google Analytics with Piwik.

So here are my most important perks for using Piwik instead of Google Analytics:

1. Data is yours

When using GA (Google Analytics) the traffic data is stored on a Google server. Apart from your Google login you don’t obtain any of this informations. So in case you care more about privacy than usability Piwik will make you happy. All informations of your Piwik installation are stored in a MySQL database.

2. Your own dependency

Google is known to have fast moving product strategy. If there’s a product in their portfolio which is no longer profitable or doesn’t apply to their product placement, they will likely drop it or at least migrate into another one. I know the chance that Google will no longer offer the analytics service is equal to zero as it’s one of their core services. But doesn’t it make your more happy when you can build up your own environment without to depend on services of some huge companies?

3. More users will increase the quality

As Piwik is an open source project everybody is able to make their contributions. Reporting issues, sharing ideas or update the source code is possible with Piwik. Piwik is community driven, the changes originate from the users and not from a specific group of people which likely can lose the connection about what really matters.

The big gap

So why not Piwik? Obvious it’s better, but why still most people rely on GA? The answer is simple, for most people it’s too difficult to install Piwik. For GA you’ll only need a Google account, but for Piwik you have to deploy your own server. However many website hoster will offer a cheap hosting for Piwik. But in case you want to install Piwik on your own, don’t hesitate, it isn’t that difficult.

To get started I recommend you to checkout my instructions for an Piwik website.

Migrate Piwik website

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 07:23:42 +0000

This post is part of my Your own Virtual Private Server hosting solution project.
Get the latest version of this article here: https://gist.github.com/9640572.

Introduction

This article assumes you’re going to move an exisiting piwik website from one server to another.

Requirements

Instructions

Export the existing SQL Piwik database with phpMyAdmin.

Import the database export into the new Piwik database with phpMyAdmin.

Update the tracking codes or update Piwik urls on the Piwik tracked websites if the hosting has changed.

Enable Piwik geolocation support with GeoIP PECL

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 08:57:31 +0000

This post is part of my Your own Virtual Private Server hosting solution project.
Get the latest version of this article here: https://gist.github.com/9758234.

Introduction

By default Piwik uses the provider location to guess a visitor’s country based on the language they use. This is not very accurate, so they recommend installing and using GeoIP.

Requirements

Installation

Download the latest GeoLite database

sudo wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz -P /var/www/[piwik]/misc/

Unzip the database.

sudo gunzip /var/www/[piwik]/misc/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz

Rename the file.

cd /var/www/[piwik]/misc
sudo mv GeoLiteCity.dat GeoIPCity.dat

Update the access rights.

sudo chown www-data:www-data GeoIPCity.dat

Update the php configuration file.

sudo vi /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

Add the geoip configuration.

geoip.custom_directory = /var/www/[piwik]/misc

Restart Nginx and php5-fpm service.

sudo nginx -t && sudo service nginx reload
sudo service php5-fpm restart

Now open your piwik installation on //[host]/piwik/index.php?module=UserCountry&action=adminIndex and check the GeoIP (PECL) option.

In addition the the GeoLite download url to the Download URL field and click save.

Source

How do I install the GeoIP Geo location PECL extension?

Install piwik website

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 06:43:16 +0000

This post is part of my Your own Virtual Private Server hosting solution project.
Get the latest version of this article here: https://gist.github.com/9640540.

Introduction

Piwik is the leading open source web analytics platform that gives you valuable insights into your website’s visitors, your marketing campaigns and much more, so you can optimize your strategy and online experience of your visitors.

Requirements

Installation

Create the new Piwik website folder.

sudo mkdir /var/www/[piwik]
cd /var/www/[piwik]

Download latest piwik

sudo wget http://builds.piwik.org/latest.tar.gz
sudo tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz

Copy Piwik content and delete unnecessary files.

sudo cp -r ./piwik/* ./
sudo rm -r piwik
sudo rm latest.tar.gz "How to install Piwik.html"

Let’s create the MySQL Piwik database and user.

mysql -u root -p

Enter the MySQL root user password.

Create the Piwik database.

CREATE DATABASE [piwik];

Create the Piwik database user.

CREATE USER [piwik]@localhost;

Set the password for the Piwik database user.

SET PASSWORD FOR [piwik]@localhost = PASSWORD("[password]");

Grant Piwik user full access on Piwik database.

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON [piwik].* TO [piwik]@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '[password]';

Refresh MySQL and exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Add the Nginx configuration to an existing website.

server{
    
    ...
    
    location /piwik{
        root /var/www;
    }
    
    ...
    
    location ~ .php$ {
        
        ...
        
        if ($request_uri ~* /piwik) {
            set $php_root /var/www;
        }
        
        ...
    }
}

Provide access to the piwik folder.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/piwik

Finally let’s add the archive cron job which will highly improve the processing time for your piwik reports.

Add a new cron job.

sudo vi /etc/cron.d/piwik-archive

Add this content to the cron file.

MAILTO="[mail@example.com]"
5 * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/[piwik]/console core:archive --url=http://[host]/piwik/ > /var/log/piwik/archive.log

Then create the log folder and grant access for the user.

sudo mkdir /var/log/piwik
sudo chown www-data:www-data piwik

Test config and reload Nginx service.

sudo nginx -t && sudo service nginx reload

Open your browser on //[host]/piwik and install the Piwik website.

Source

How to Install Piwik on Ubuntu by AdminEmpire