“The open source Web analytics program Piwik turned 1.0 in
August, continuing its well-earned reputation as an
easy-to-install, easy-to-use traffic monitoring solution. But if
all you do is stick with the default options, you are not getting
the full value that Piwik has to offer. This weekend, look into how
you can extend Piwik’s functionality to benefit your site.“For those that are new to Piwik, it is an open source framework
for tracking site visits and automatically generating statistical
reports, much in the same vein as the proprietary offerings like
Google Analytics or WebTrends. The basic methodology is common to
most other analytics systems: it inserts a few lines of JavaScript
into each page, logs the results in a database, and generates
aggregate statistics for page views, referrals, search
engine-driven traffic, and other useful metrics.“The main distinction mentioned in most Piwik reviews is that
you, the site administrator, are in complete control over the data.
It is logged to a local MySQL database, never viewed by Google,
Yahoo, or another third-party company with its own ax to
grind.”