F.A.Q.’s

Difference between Server Side Caching and Browser Caching.

We probably all know how to clear a Browser Cache to view the latest updated Version of a Webpage. This is something we can do locally on our Computer or Laptop. But Servers also cache Pages sometimes and I have seen instances where the Server or Provider has not cleared cache for a couple of days.

So what is the difference between Server and Browser Cache?

Browser Side Caching: Your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or whatever you use) decides to remember how a webpage looks like so it doesn’t have to ask the server to send the webpage again. This saves time (and bandwidth) by eliminating almost the entire network communication. However, if the server decides to change the way the webpage looks like, you’re in trouble because the browser’s “memory” of how it thinks the page should look like is now out of date, and it’ll give you an old version of the page instead of the new one. This is why people sometimes tell you to “clear your browser cache”– that forces your browser to “forget” what the page looks like. This forces it to ask the server for the new, updated version of the page.

Server Side Caching: The server responsible for generating the webpage (i.e. putting the webpage together), decides to remember how the webpage looks like, so it doesn’t have to generate it again. This saves time (but not bandwidth) because now the server doesn’t have to go through the trouble of constructing a whole page– it can just re-send whatever it sent last time the browser asked for it. However, if any data on the webpage needs to change, the server is forced to throw away its “memory” of what the page looks like, and it will need to generate the page again. This kind of caching is useful if the page is really complex and takes a lot of time to generate

Mailbox Full? / POP3 vs.IMAP Email Setup

POP3 vs. IMAP Email Setup

If you use an email app (such as Outlook or Apple Mail), you’ve probably seen these acronyms before.  If you’ve previously used other email services like GMAIL or MOBILE ME, your email client may have simply set up your accounts automatically, and you may not have had to think about which set up was right for you.

Most of the hosted email accounts (including the ones I set up for you) can be set up either way though. So it might make sense to decide whether POP3 or IMAP is best for how you use email.

Once you understand the difference between POP and IMAP, it can actually revolutionize the way you use email—and it can help turn your Inbox into an effective productivity tool.

More and more mobile devices and updated versions of email clients are defaulting to an IMAP set up when doing an “Automatic” set up, so it’s good to understand what IMAP is, before you get locked into that set up, as it may not be the best set up for your email behavior, especially on our servers.

Let’s break it down . . .

When someone sends you an email, it’s stored on your website’s server. You can access this new email one of two ways:

1) POP – Using your email app (Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.), you can download your email to your computer, and then delete it from the server.

Advantages

+ You don’t need to worry about running out of online storage space. Since you’re downloading your emails to your computer, you can keep as many emails as your computer can store.

+ You will need an Internet connection to download email, but you can manage (ie: search your inbox, and folders) your downloaded email offline (i.e., without an Internet connection).

Disadvantages

– Since your email is stored on your computer, you must be at that computer to manage your email. This prevents you from managing email on-the-road or from your mobile device. (Although you can set your email client (Outlook or Apple Mail) to NOT DELETE email off the server for a certain period of time, if you plan to travel, or do check your email from multiple devices, thus enabling you to get your email on each device.  It just requires checking the server with all the devices in a regular manner.

– You will need to implement an effective backup system for your computer, in case you need to retrieve lost or deleted emails.

Is POP the best productivity choice for you?

If you always access your email from one computer, and you have limited online storage capacity or use a dial-up connection, POP is probably best for you. It will save you the hassle of worrying about online storage limits or poor connection speeds. Just be sure you back up your computer regularly.

* By default, POP will download and then delete all email in your mail server’s Inbox; however, most email apps will give you the option of keeping email on the mail server, if you prefer. This way you could check your email using our webmail application, Squirrel Mail, from another location.  You could also download emails using a mobile device.

IMAP – Using your email app (Outlook, etc.), you can manage your email directly on the mail server, rather than downloading it to your computer.

Advantages

+ Since the emails are stored on the mail server, you can access and manage your email and email folders from multiple computers or mobile devices.

+ Email is automatically backed up; so, if you accidentally delete an email, your email administrator can retrieve it.

Disadvantages

– As your email mailboxes do not have unlimited online storage space, you will need to delete emails periodically to avoid exceeding your storage capacity.  If you want to SAVE the emails, you can  simply “move” the emails from your InBox on the Server to your “Personal” folders on your “local” computer.

– If your Internet connection becomes unavailable, you cannot access your email offline.

Is IMAP the best productivity choice for you?

If you need to access your email and email folders from multiple computers and/or a mobile device, IMAP is best for you. Your email will be centrally located on the mail server, so you can access it directly from any Internet connection.

* By default, email apps store your sent, draft, and trash email on your computer, rather than storing it on the email server (as it should with an IMAP connection); however, most apps give you the option of using your online Sent, Drafts, and Trash folders instead.

Regardless of whether you choose POP or IMAP, you can continue to use your favorite email app—such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc.

We generally encourage our clients to set up their email clients, and mobile devices, using POP3, as our servers, while very reliable, are not infinitely large.  POP3 makes it easy for users to manage the size of their inboxes on the server (thus allowing the user to continue to receive email uninterrupted), because email clients can be set to automatically delete email off the server after a set number of days.  This usually is the best scenario, because then the user doesn’t have to remember to move email manually from the INBOX down to local servers.

POP3 set up is especially useful to those clients who don’t want to incur the extra cost of extra Cloud storage, or for a hosted exchange set up (also cloud based). With a POP3 setup, users can set their email client to leave email up on our servers, and thus still check their email from multiple mobile devices (smart phones, tablets), (without having to use the IMAP set up), and easily download and archive their email to one (or many) local harddrives.  This makes it very easy for users to archive gigabytes of email for professional reasons, which would cost much more under a cloud storage or Hosted Exchange framework.

IMAP is really only best for people with guaranteed Internet access at all times, and who never need to access old email stored locally when out of Internet reach.

And users can always access email directly from the email server via our webmail applications, Squirrel Mail, Horde or SmarterMail. (they all do the same thing, allowing you to access or view your emails online but differ in layout.)

WordPress 4.4.1 Admin Login Issues

Did your WordPress Website Auto Update to 4.4.1 and you have a wp-admin Loop or Re Direct Issue?
Ask your Hosting Provider to disable ModSecurity Rules #214620 & #214940.
This worked for me.If you do not have access to disable the Rules yourself you can test this by disabling ModSecurity completely (temporarily and not really recommended).If your Login redirect or loop issue is gone, then that is the Issue. Enable ModSecurity again and ask your Hosting Provider to just dis able those two Rules.

Is Google slowing your Site Down?

google tool pagespeed insights

Is Google Slowing your Website down?

How do you leverage browser cache for Google analytics. Since Google added page load times to its ranking system It is ironic that the google analytic code should slow your site down.
Use this safe Google Tool to test your Site for Speed and then read below for some solutions.

Contact me if you need some help.

The short answer is to host it on your own server and download the latest script from Google daily. This way you get to cache the java script as well as cache it,

Google Analytics can be tamed

Here is a step by steip process:

First you need the Google analytics code which you can get by typing google-analytics.com/ga.js This is quite a large script and you can see WHY it slows your site down right away.

Secondly you will need to create a file on your hosting account, create the file in the root folder of your domain.Call it whatever you like as long as it ends with .js
I just called it ga.js

Next, copy all that information from the Google analytics code, just press (control A) and save it inside the file you just created on your hosting account. You can do that via FTP or through Cpanel, Godaddy file manager and whatever other set up hosting companies use.

So that’s the first part out of the way, whats next…

Now that we have the script on our hosting account, we need to make sure it works.

Grab you Google analytics script which would look like this:

<script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq ¦¦ []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();</script>

Look near the bottom where it says ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; change it to yourdomain.com/ga.js or whatever you called your script. Then it would look something like this

<script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq ¦¦ []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.diywpblog.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();</script>

Refresh your page when complete and right click to view you source and scroll to your google analytics code to make sure it is there. Also enter your google analytics code in to your browser and it should load the same content as the analytics link above.

How do we update the script

There are two options here, the first is you could copy the google analytics script by typing in google-analytics.com/ga.js and copy its content each day to make sure your up to date, or we can employ the powers of cron.

What is cron?

Cron is in simple terms a way of executing commands or scripts on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basics to perform automated tasks. What we want to do is set up an automated task to download Google analytics java script each day to make sure it is up to date.

Create another file and call it something like ga-cron.php and save it to the same place you saved the Google analytics code which should be your root folder. Then copy this code in to the folder and save. You will only need to make one change, Where is says Insert absolute path to the file here.

Usually the absolute path can be found on your dashboard but to quickly find it if its not clearly stated is to enter your domain in to that line followed by the ga.js or whatever name you used for you Google analytics script. Then run this script by typing in your browser, http://Your-domain-name.com/ga-cron.php When you do this the script will execute, but there will be errors, one of them will be about using http. Copy the bold error because that contains your absolute path and change it as necessary.

Once you can run the script with out error then your good to move on to the final part.

Note: for the ga.js file make it writable.

<?// script to update local version of Google analytics script// Remote file to download$remoteFile = 'http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js';$localfile = 'ENTER YOUR ABSOLUTE PATH TO THE FILE HERE';//For Cpanel it will be /home/USERNAME/public_html/ga.js// Connection time out$connTimeout = 10;$url = parse_url($remoteFile);$host = $url['host'];$path = isset($url['path']) ? $url['path'] : '/';if (isset($url['query'])) { $path .= '?' . $url['query'];}$port = isset($url['port']) ? $url['port'] : '80';$fp = @fsockopen($host, '80', $errno, $errstr, $connTimeout );if(!$fp){ // On connection failure return the cached file (if it exist) if(file_exists($localfile)){ readfile($localfile); }} else { // Send the header information $header = "GET $path HTTP/1.0\r\n"; $header .= "Host: $host\r\n"; $header .= "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6\r\n"; $header .= "Accept: */*\r\n"; $header .= "Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n"; $header .= "Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\n"; $header .= "Keep-Alive: 300\r\n"; $header .= "Connection: keep-alive\r\n"; $header .= "Referer: http://$host\r\n\r\n"; fputs($fp, $header); $response = ''; // Get the response from the remote server while($line = fread($fp, 4096)){ $response .= $line; } // Close the connection fclose( $fp ); // Remove the headers $pos = strpos($response, "\r\n\r\n"); $response = substr($response, $pos + 4); // Return the processed response echo $response; // Save the response to the local file if(!file_exists($localfile)){ // Try to create the file, if doesn't exist fopen($localfile, 'w'); } if(is_writable($localfile)) { if($fp = fopen($localfile, 'w')){ fwrite($fp, $response); fclose($fp); } }}?>

Finally we need to set up the cron

The cron is simply gonna execute the php code above.

For Godaddy you can do this by going to content—> cron job manager.

Select create cron: give it a name: select update frequency.

I set mine to every hour, but you can do it once a day or once a week, its up to you.

Where it says command, don’t type anything in there, just select browse and select the php file you created then save.

Simple.

For Cpanel select cron jobs.

Select common settings to set a frequency.

Then you need to type the command which should be something like

php /home/username/public_html/ga-cron.php

Fill in the appropriate information.

General points

I would run the cron at 5 minute intervals at first and check the modification time of the Google script which you have on your server, if it changes by itself then you are good to go.

Add your Business to Google Places

If you are a business owner with a website and a brick & mortar shop with a physical location, you can increase your Google visibility for free by adding your business to Google Places.
Google Places is simply Google’s method of allowing companies to register information about their physical shop. Google then uses this information in a variety of ways to boost your business’s online presence. Here are some examples:

  • A search on Google for “Cyprus Real Estate.” Notice the map and the local real estate agencies that list next to it — these are businesses that have added their info to Google Places.
  • A search for “Toys” on Google Product Search. Depending on your physical location, you will often see “X nearby” near the price of some products. This informs users about locally available products via Google Places information.
  • A search for “protaras water sports” on Google Services Search. Depending on your physical location, Google will list Service Industries near you.
  • Many other places within the Google properties

If you do not have the technical know-how nor the time or inclination to add your business to Google Places yourself we can add your business to Google Places for a one-time LOW fee (Request Quote). However, instructions on how to add it yourself, for free, are below.

  1. Ideally, be in a location where you are able to answer your main business phone number (will be used for verification).
  2. Visit this website: www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter
  3. Sign in with a google account. If you don’t have one, you can create a google account for free.
  4. Enter your country and phone number and click “Find business information.”
  5. You may find that your business is already listed. If so, simply click edit and you can continue.
  6. Now either fill out, or verify, all of the information regarding your business on the page.
  7. The more information you specify, the better.
  8. At a minimum, fill out the “Basic Information” section as completely as possible.
  9. Near the bottom of the “Basic Information” area you will want to add as many categories as you can think of (5 max). As you type the category, Google will suggest what to use. You should go with Google’s suggestion if possible as this will be more standard. Then click “add another category” to add up to five. For example, if you sell outdoor gear, you might have categories set to:
    • “Outdoor Sports Store”
    • “Sporting Goods Store”
    • “Camping Store”
  10. Continue filling out information including your store hours and payment options. You should also upload an image of your storefront and an image of your logo as well. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can even upload a video that talks about your business and/or products.
  11. Finally, you should add as many “Additional Details” as you can. Specifics on this section can be found here. If you sell outdoor gear, you might have your Additional Details set as follows:
    • Parking availability: Free, Street
    • Brands: North Face, Patagonia, …
    • Services: Sales, Repairs
  12. Finally click Submit, and validate your listing. If you are able to answer your main business phone choose the “By phone” option and expect a verification call shortly. If you are not near your business phone, choose the by “By postcard” option. For either method, Google will provide you with a PIN (by phone, or by mail). Write this number down and enter it in your Google Places account.

Congratulations, your Google Places account is now setup. This should provide you with an extra traffic boost for both your physical and virtual stores.

Having trouble? We can put your business on Google Places for a one-time LOW fee. Please request a NO OBLIGATION QUOTE for more details or to get started today!
Request Quote

So HOW does it all work? Whats Next?

I will try to explain the Process a little bit here from previously asked questions, but if you have any other queries just CONTACT ME.

The First Thing to do might be to register your Details here [link to register your details] on my Site so I can send you a NO – OBLIGATION Quote.
This will also be useful for eventual later Invoicing, Renewal Notices, Updates etc. The Quote will be made out to the Details you leave there, so if you want a quote made out to your company leave those details or your personal ones.

If you want a new Website there are 3 things to consider or you need.

  • A Domain Name (when registering a domain name you usually NEED to supply nameserver (dns) info i.e. hosting details). If you do not have hosting YET we can park the Name for free.
  • A Hosting Package somewhere to upload your designed Pages or Site to
  • A Website Designed

A Domain Name can be bought on many websites on the internet including our own [link to check availability]

Remember: Our current Offer includes a free Domain Name Registration (.com, .net, .info only) for the first Year.Thereafter the normal Domain Name Renewal Fee applies.

Hosting: There are many Companies offering various Hosting Packages. You can shop around (you can host ANYWHERE even If I design your Website). [link to our own hosting packages]
An explanation of the various Package Details is given there as well. Most popular one is the LS 1 Package. Free Email Accounts, Mysql Database etc are of course all standard features.

Domain Name and Hosting usually need to get renewed yearly but there is no Obligation and if for whatever reason you do not want to carry on the Website or Name it will just lapse on NON Renewal (NON-Payment)

Website Design: This is a once off Fee. Currently around € 150.00, but can vary a bit depending on Features Needed.

Some more F.A.Q’s can also be found on my Website [link to more f.a.q.’s]

Important: The Reason we ask for Pre Payment for some Services such as Domain Name Registration or Hosting Accounts is:
Once a Domain Name has been registered it CANNOT be changed or edited. If you instruct me to register www.domainone.com but later change your mind and want www.domaintwo.com

I cannot change the Name and me (or you) own the Domain. To get the new name you would have to purchase it.
Similar, if you made a typing mistake and later realize the Name is spelled wrong, I cannot change it.
I am sitting with a few Domain Names Customers asked me to register (before paying me) and then decided for various reasons they do not want the Name anymore or it.
So PLEASE make sure you have the right spelling of the Name you want to register.

I hope this helps a little bit but please contact me if anything is NOT clear.

Piwik Analytics Setup

Piwik is a free and open source web analytics application written by a team of international developers that runs on a PHP/MySQL webserver. Piwik is used by over 480,000 websites, 1.2% of all websites, and has been translated to more than 45 languages. New versions of Piwik are regularly released every few weeks.

Piwik tracks online visits to one or more websites and displays reports on these visits for analysis.

Piwik displays reports regarding the geographic location of visits, the source of visits (i.e. whether they came from a website, directly, or something else), the technical capabilities of visitors (browser, screen size, operating system, etc.), what the visitors did (pages they viewed, actions they took, how they left), the time of visits and more.

In addition to these reports, Piwik provides some other features that can help users analyze the data Piwik accumulates, such as:

  •     Annotations — the ability to save notes (such as one’s analyses of data) and attach them to dates in the past.
  •     Transitions — a feature similar to Click path-like features that allows one to see how visitors navigate a website, but different in that it only displays navigation information for one page at a time.
  •     Goals — the ability to set goals for actions it is desired for visitors to take (such as visiting a page or buying a product). Piwik will track how many visits result in those actions being taken.
  •     E-commerce — the ability to track if and how much people spend on a website.
  •     Page Overlay — a feature that displays analytics data overlaid on top of a website.
  •     Row Evolution — a feature that displays how metrics change over time within a report.
  •     Custom Variables — the ability to attach data, like a user name, to visit data.

Piwik also provides features that are not directly related to analyzing web traffic, including:

  •     Privacy Options — the ability to anonymize IP addresses, purge tracking data regularly (but not report data), opt-out support and Do Not Track support. In Germany, 13% of .de websites use Piwik because of these options.[6]
  •     Scheduled Reports — reports sent regularly by e-mail or text message.
  •     Log Importing — a script is also provided that imports data from web server logs.
  •     the API — every report is accessible through a web API as well as almost every administrative function. Programs can be created to use this API.
  •     the Mobile App — a free mobile app is provided so users can access their analytic data on their phone.

Though not strictly speaking a feature, Piwik also has the characteristic that users are the only people who see their own data. This is a by-product of Piwik being a self-hosted solution. Software as a service solutions (such as Google Analytics) on the other hand, have full access to the data users collect.

Piwik can also be integrated with many third-party apps including CMSes such as WordPress or Drupal, E-Commerce apps such as Magento or PrestaShop, bulletin board systems such as phpBB, and more.

The Piwik community has also created several plugins that can be used to augment Piwik. There are currently 20 third-party plugins.

Order Installation here:

FAQ’s

Disclaimer: These F.A.Q’s have been taken from the official Piwik Website and ALL Credits goes to the original Author

 

Answers

  • What is Piwik?

    Piwik is a downloadable, Free (GPL licensed) web analytics software package. It provides detailed reports on your website and its visitors, including the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, which pages they like, the files they download… and so much more.
    Piwik aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics.
    Piwik is PHP MySQL software which you download and install on your own webserver. At the end of the 5-minute installation process you will be given a JavaScript tag. Simply copy and paste this tag on websites you wish to track (or use an existing plugin to do it automatically for you).

  • How is Piwik different to Google Analytics and other web analytics tools?

    Piwik is the leading open source web analytics software, but there are dozens of other free and paid web analytics solutions; why choose Piwik?

    One of the principle advantages of Piwik is that you are in control. Unlike remote-hosted services (such as Google Analytics), you host Piwik on your own server and the data is tracked inside your Mysql database. Because Piwik is installed on your server, you enjoy full control over your data. You can access the data easily via the Piwik APIs. Advanced users can use Custom Variables, Segmentation, or even run manual queries on the database in order to build advanced reports.

    Piwik also protects your visitor privacy with advanced Privacy features. When using Piwik for Web Analytics, you ensure that your visitors behavior on your website(s) is not shared with advertising companies.

    If you are using Google Analytics and starting to use Piwik, you can import your Google Analytics data history into Piwik. You can also use several web analytics tools at the same time so feel free to experiment!

    To help you decide on a Web Analytics software, you might want to look at the list of features in Piwik or the online demo. Piwik offers nearly all features that other tools may offer, and also has some unique features such as Real Time visitor details, Ecommerce Analytics, and an awesome Mobile App.

    Happy Analytics!

  • How does Piwik work?

    Piwik has to be installed on a server with both PHP and MySQL. At the end of the 5-minute installation, Piwik will give you a Javascript tag which you add to the bottom of each page of your website. Piwik will then record the activity across your website within your database. Piwik aggregates this data to provide detailed web analytics reports about your visitors, page views, referrer information, search engine keywords, Ecommerce, campaigns and much more!

    As well as tracking via the Javascript file, you can also import web server access logs into Piwik.

  • Is there an online demo available?

    Yes, check out the online demo to see how awesome Piwik is!

    If you prefer seeing the list of features all in one page, check out the list of features.

  • Can Piwik manage multiple user accounts?

    In Piwik, you can create an infinite number of users and websites to track.
    For each user, you can set permissions to “view”, “admin” or “no permission” for a specific website, or for all websites at once.

    The permission system in Piwik is simple and makes it very easy to manage from a small number of websites and users to hundreds of websites and thousands of users. See the Manage Users documentation.

  • How do I track several websites, domains and multiple subdomains in Piwik?

    You can add unlimited websites to track in Piwik, in the Admin Websites section. In fact, Piwik scales well to thousands of websites, and a few Piwik users are tracking even more. Each Website is defined by a URL. You can track sub domains in the same Piwik website, or you can create a different website for some of your subdomains. Learn more about creating Websites in the Managing websites page.

    It is also important to configure First party cookie domains in the Javascript Tracking code. Please see the page Tracking code: Cookie configuration for sub-domains.

    If you track many subdomains in the same Piwik website, you might want to have the domain name appear on your Page Title reports: “support.example.org/Homepage” rather than “Homepage”, check out the JS setDocumentTitle documentation.
    In the Admin Websites page, you can also define for each website a list of Alias URLs which contains all the other domains and subdomains that will be tracked. This will ensure they don’t appear in your “Referer” reports.

    If you track more than 10 websites, the Website selector will display the first ten sites only, and show a search field where you can search quickly to look at another website. Check out the ‘All Websites’ dashboard as well, a very useful first page to look at for a quick overview of the performance yesterday or last week or all your sites. You can even make it your defaut page to load in Piwik in your user settings.
    See also: Install Piwik on one server and track visits on websites that are hosted on other servers.
    The official Piwik Mobile App supports all these reports, including the ‘All Websites’ dashboard.

  • How do I define and track Goal conversions?

    You can add unlimited number of Goals to track in Piwik (newsletter subscription, file download, ‘thank you’ page, etc.). Learn more about how to track your website Goals in the Goal Tracking documentation.

  • How do I improve accuracy of visitors’ Country detection, and enable Cities and Regions tracking?

    By default Piwik uses the browser language to determine location. To improve accuracy of country detection (and enable Region and City tracking), go to Piwik > Settings > Geo Location. Then, you can select the appropriate solution for your install. These include GEOIP database from Maxmind (for shared hosting) or a server side solutions such as GeoIP Apache or GeoIP PECL modules. Learn more about Visitors geo location in Piwik.

  • How do I track Ecommerce orders, details of purchased products and abandoned carts on my website?

    Piwik provides advanced Ecommerce Tracking and Reporting functionnality. Learn more in the page Ecommerce Analytics.

  • How does Piwik ensure Privacy of my Analytics data, and Privacy of my website Visitors?

    Piwik is the ideal Web Analytics software that respects Privacy, thanks to its Free/Libre software nature and useful Privacy settings, setting it apart from other commercial tools such as Google analytics. To ensure and respect your visitors Privacy, you can:
    1) automatically anonymize Visitors IPs,
    2) include a Web Analytics opt-out feature on your site (using a simple iframe), and
    3) Delete old visitors logs.
    To configure Privacy features in Piwik, log in as a Super User, click “Settings” then click “Privacy”.
    Learn more about Piwik, Data & Users Privacy.

  • How does Piwik track downloads?

    On many websites, you want to track when visitors download your brochure, a photo, a software, etc. Piwik automatically track these clicks as Downloads, and reports them under Actions > Downloads.
    Piwik will automatically detect a download as a click on a link that ends with one of the following file extensions: 7z, aac, arc, arj, asf, asx, avi, bin, bz, bz2, csv, deb, dmg, doc, exe, flv, gif, gz, gzip, hqx, jar, jpg, jpeg, js, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpg, mpeg, mov, movie, msi, msp, odb, odf, odg, odp, ods, odt, ogg, ogv, pdf, phps, png, ppt, qt, qtm, ra, ram, rar, rpm, sea, sit, tar,
    tbz, tbz2, tgz, torrent, txt, wav, wma, wmv, wpd, xls, xml, z, zip.
    You can also force Piwik to count a click as a download by using a specific CSS class for this link. Check out the section “Force a click on a link to be recorded as a download in Piwik” in the Javascript tagging Guide.

  • The Piwik report “Pages > Outlinks” shows the list of external URLs that were clicked by your visitors from your website pages. Piwik will track as an “outlink” all clicks on URLs that are not the same domain as the website being tracked. For example, if your visitor click on a link to “piwik.org” on your website “example.org”, this will be counted as an outlink in the report.

    For each outlink, Piwik will report the number of clicks, and the number of unique clicks. Unique clicks are the number of unique visitors that clicked to a given domain ; for example, if the same visitor clicked 3 times on the same outlink, it will be reported as 3 clicks and 1 unique click.

    Note that Piwik is not able to track Javascript of flash links. Only HTML links are tracked, eg. <a href='http://linkedin.com'>LinkedIn Profile</a>

    If you wish to not track clicks on your subdomains as outlinks, for example if your website is “example.org/” and you don’t want to track outlinks to “news.example.org”, you can use the Javascript function setDomains(). Read more in the documentation.

    Learn more about Click Tracking in the Javascript tagging Guide.

  • Does Piwik track visitors without Javascript? Does Piwik track search engine bots or other spider / robots?

    By default, Piwik only tracks visitors with Javascript enabled. See more information about the tracking process.

    If you want to track visitors (or bots) without Javascript, you can add an Image Tracker on your pages. Advanced users can also use the Advanced Image Tracker or even call the Piwik Tracking API using HTTP. Check out more information on how to use these advanced tracking techniques in the Piwik Tracking API. See also How do I enable tracking for visitors without Javascript?

    You can also use Piwik to track Search Engine Bots. For this you will need access to your web server access log files, which you can import in Piwik along with Search Engine Bots Traffic information.

  • Can I use Piwik and Google Analytics / Yahoo! Analytics / WebTrends etc. at the same time?

    Yes, you can use any combination of analytics packages at the same time on your pages. The downside is that your pages might take longer to load as each analytics Javascript tracking code will add some delay to the page load. We also recommend putting the Piwik Tracking code first, above other javascript codes, just before the </body>. Read more about the Piwik Javascript Tracking API

  • How do I know when new versions are released?

    The Piwik Changelog page lists all recent Piwik versions and the list of changes. The best way to keep track of all new versions is to subscribe to the Changelog Rss Feed.

    To stay tuned about the latest Piwik developments, you can try the Piwik blog (by rss or email – see the sidebar of the blog) or register with the piwik-hackers mailing list (more info in the developer section). Also, when a new version is released, your Piwik will display a message inviting you to update to the latest version.

  • Where can I get support?

    If you’re looking for help, please read the FAQs, the Documentation, or search piwik.org. If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, please post a message in the Piwik Forums, where you can get help from the community.

    If you need professional support, you can contact one of the official Piwik Consultants or learn more about Piwik Consulting.

  • How much does Piwik cost?

    Piwik is a Free Software, released under the GPL license. It does not have a monetary cost (it is free of charge) and the software license ensures it respects your freedom to use and modify the software.

    If you would like to pay back a little something, you are welcome to participate in the project and spend some of your time and energy to make Piwik better (the app, website or docs). We are grateful for our wonderful sponsors and the core Piwik team for their amazing work.

  • Is there any Data Limit in Piwik? Is it possible to keep all historical data?

    Please See our Piwik Data Limits Fact Sheet for more information about Data Limits and Historical Data records. In general, Piwik does not believe in any limits, and will only be limited with the server resources.

    If you have access to existing data, you can also transfer it to Piwik. In particular, you can import old historical visitors data in Piwik, or import data from Google Analytics.

  • Does Piwik track visits from Mobile devices (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, low end mobile phones, etc.)?

    Piwik will automatically track visits on mobile phones that use browsers executing Javascript: iOs based devices such as iPhone and iPad, Android based phones or any other modern devices (running Palm Pre, Opera Mobile, Webkit, Mozilla Fennec, etc.).

    For low-end mobile devices that use browsers which do not execute Javascript, you can manually record visits using the Piwik Tracking API. Learn more about the Piwik Tracking API.

    See also Does Piwik track visitors without Javascript? .

  • Can I use Piwik and provide analytics Hosting service? What are the requirements for Piwik Hosted as a service?

    It is allowed to re-sell Piwik and provide it for free, or for a fee.

    In fact, we maintain a list of Official Hosting Piwik partners which we recommended.

    If you are providing a service reusing Piwik, you must also reuse the word Piwik with care. Please see the Piwik Trademark page for more details about how to reuse the name Piwik in your modified version of Piwik. In particular, it is not allowed to use Piwik in the URL domain name.

  • Can I rebrand or sell or reuse or re-license or include Piwik in my product, company, or website?

    Reusing Piwik in any way is allowed as long as you respect the GPL license.
    If your product, software, or website uses Piwik but all the code (including your modifications) stays within your company or server, you have the freedom to keep your code and not be bound to the GPL License. For example, you can change the header and footer to reflect your brand, change the colors, or add new features on your copy of Piwik.
    If you distribute a modified version of Piwik, or software that includes Piwik as a module, or develop a website for a customer/client that includes Piwik, you must give access to the code source and publish all the code under the GPL.
    Plugins Licenses: Individual components, libraries or plugins may be available for reuse under a different license. Please refer to the LEGALNOTICE file included in the distribution.
    You may want to learn more about the GPL License and look at the GPL FAQ.
    As well as respecting the GPL license, you must also reuse the word Piwik with care. Please see the Piwik Trademark page for more details about how to reuse the name Piwik in your modified version of Piwik.
    Finally, if you modify Piwik and add new features or fix existing bugs, please submit your patches back to the Piwik team: together we will build the best Free/Libre web analytics software!

  • Does Piwik work on high traffic websites? What is the performance like with millions of pages views per month?

    Piwik can scale to millions of page views per month and/or to thousands of registered websites. If you have a few hundreds visits/page views per day, Piwik should work fine “out of the box”.

  • Can I customize the Piwik logo in the reports, emails and login screen?

    Piwik allows to upload your custom logo, which will be displayed everywhere the normal Piwik logo displays: 1) top of the screen in the Analytics reports, 2) Login screen, 3) Emails & PDF Reports.

    To upload a Custom Logo in Piwik, login as the Super User, click on Settings > General Settings > Branding, and click on “Use a custom logo”.

  • Can I get the data from the Piwik API web services and publish, reuse, process this data in a non GPL software?

    Yes, the data coming from the Piwik API belongs to you and is not covered by the GPL. You can use Piwik as a service, and reuse, publish, display, modify, process the data coming from the Piwik API using the REST web service call – this is not allowed if you call the API when using Piwik as a PHP library (see how to call the API?).

  • Does Piwik work in a load balanced environment? How do I setup Piwik for high scale tracking?

    Many medium-high traffic websites successfully use Piwik to track and analyse their website behavior and performance.

    If you want to provide high reliability and better performance in your Piwik setup, you can load balance Piwik services on various servers. It is pretty easy to do so, but make sure you read the following documentation.

    Piwik stores all tracking data, reports, users, settings, etc. in the shared mysql database. Piwik also needs to read/create files to store information, caches, temporary files:

    • config/config.ini.php is used by every request to Piwik. It contains db access, plugins enabled, various settings, etc.
      The file is only modified when the Super User changes some settings in the Admin interface (plugins, super user password, smtp settings, etc.). This file must be synchronized on every Piwik server.
    • tmp/* contains temporary and cached files such as: compiled templates, generated PDFs, tracking caches, etc.
      This directory tmp/ content can be safely deleted and Piwik will automatically recompile templates and recreate caches.
    • by default, Piwik uses file session storage, which are usually stored in tmp/sessions, or in the global sessions directory (see php.ini).
      There is a config setting to enable database session storage.

    When Piwik is used behind a load balancer, here are the steps to follow:

    • 1) synchronize config/config.ini.php on all servers – make sure the file config/config.ini.php is the same on all servers (using rsync for example).
    • 2) setup a cron to delete the tracker cache every 5 minutes on all servers: rm piwik/tmp/cache/tracker/*
    • 3) enable database session storage
    • 4) we highly recommend to enable SSL in Piwik

    Piwik should then work as expected in a load balanced environment.
    For example, a common way to load balance Piwik on 3 servers: Load balancer in front of (2x) webservers which are tracking/querying the (1x) Master mysql DB server. For further optimization, a (1x) UI webserver can be added, to handle all API requests, UI requests, and run the cron archiving. This server can also be doubled and load balanced.

    Typically, webserver boxes would be cheap to operate servers, and the Master DB server would be bigger (eg. multiple cores, 8G memory, fast disk access), which could scale to a certain point (1M+ pages per day).

  • Where does the name Piwik come from?

    When working on the first version of Piwik, Matthieu was looking for a name that was unique, easy to write and to remember, with as few letters as possible, and for which the domain name was still available. After a few hours of deliberation and creativity, the name Piwik was born out of Matt’s imagination.

    The name ‘Piwik’ does not have a particular meaning, but we are on a mission: “To create, as a community, the leading international open source web analytics platform, that gives users full control of their data.”

  • How do I pronounce Piwik?

    If you’re wondering how to say ‘Piwik’, you can find out by clicking play.

  • Who is the team behind Piwik?

    Piwik is a Free/Libre collaborative effort with many people contributing to the project to make Piwik what it is today. Visit the Piwik Team page to view profiles.
    You can also be part of the Piwik project! We need help to build the best open source web analytics software, and there are many ways to help whether you are a Piwik user, a developer, a marketing fan, a blogger, or if your native language is not English and you want to translate the software. Check out the How to Contribute? page.

Disclaimer: These F.A.Q’s have been taken from the official Piwik Website and ALL Credits goes to the original Author

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