Piwik is an Open Source solution to measure your website audience, that is a true alternative to Google Analytics and Xiti! One first big difference is that contrary to the two latter Piwik keeps your visitors’ data on your own server. That means you can be assured that nobody else gets access to them! It is undoubtedly a good point as tracking and personalized advertising are more and more unwelcomed by users.

Piwik will give you statistics about your website visitors according to:

• tags used by visitors to access your website
• geographical location of your visitors
• duration of visits
• pages that are most seen
• clicks by visitors (2nd image)
• and so on.

The website graphics are a good example for 2.0 : simple, intuitive and customizable. What’s more numerous widgets (code embed) can be inserted into your website:

• last 30 days’ visits
• browsers that are most used
• country of your visitors
• and so on.

For developers, there is an OPEN API to access analysis easily.

It is not the first try for such a tool but is the first time indeed that functionalities are almost the same as those of Google Analytics or Xiti. Piwik is in fact the last PhpMyVisites update. New functionalities were worthwile a change of name!

Like Google Analytics and Xiti, you will need a Javascript code on every page to obtain your statistics.

Piwik requires a Mysql database as well as the Php 5.1.3 version … you just can’t install it on Free

Updating

The source code is to be checked on sourceforge and the development is under Eclipse. The developers’ community will help you if you wish to add a plugin. You can participate to its development or create your own plugins.

All companies are anxious about their visibility and their data security, I bet we will hear about that tool. Besides Piwik offers one more advantage compared to Google Analytics and Xiti’s functionalities: it allows you to create your personal consultation interfaces. That is you can insert Piwik analysis in your intranet dashboard or create your own analysis scripts. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the next Anaska’s catalog offers training about Piwik!