PiwikPlugin

Piwik is the leading self-Hosted, decentralized, Open Source web Analytics Platform, used by 460,000 websites in 150 countries.

There are a couple of advantages and disadvantages comparing client side vs server side page tracking:

• measurements on the server are more reliable as they don't rely on the client to cooperate with regards to JavaScript and cookie settings
• installing a Foswiki plugin is more standardized compared to injecting additional JavaScript to your site
• page rendering times are captured on the server and propagated to te Piwik analyzer
• custom site search tools like SolrPlugin can hook into the tracking process on the server in a reliable way
• the Piwik API doesn't have to be exposed to the outside which would normally be the case for the browser to be able to contact it
• some measures like screen size and browser plugins can't be recorded on the server
• click overlays don't work without piwik-related JavaScript being added to the site

In short: the bulk of interesting data can be captured server side in a more reliable way while some minor features of Piwik aren't covered yet by data produced by PiwikPlugin.

Installation Instructions

You do not need to install anything in the browser to use this extension. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the extension on the server.

cd /path/to/foswiki
perl tools/extension_installer <NameOfExtension> install

To finish installation, you'll have to configure at least:

• the {ApiUrl} of your Piwik server, e.g. http://localhost/piwik/piwik.php
• The {TokenAuth} to access advanced features (see the API menu on your Piwik server).
• the {SiteId} of your Foswiki server; this is a numeric id of your sites configured in piwik itself
• the {QueueDir} to spool tracked page views while being recorded by Foswiki

$VirtualHost{PiwikPlugin}{SiteId} = 1;

Foswiki < 1.2.0

To track rendering times on older Foswikis you need to apply below patch

--- a/lib/Foswiki/Request.pm
+++ b/lib/Foswiki/Request.pm
@@ -37,6 +37,16 @@ use Error    ();
 use IO::File ();
 use CGI::Util qw(rearrange);

+use Time::HiRes ();
+
+sub getTime {
+    my $this     = shift;
+    my $endTime  = [Time::HiRes::gettimeofday];
+    my $timeDiff = Time::HiRes::tv_interval( $this->{start_time}, $endTime );
+    return $timeDiff;
+}
+
+
 =begin TML

 ---++ ClassMethod new([$initializer])
@@ -69,6 +79,7 @@ sub new {
         remote_user    => undef,
         secure         => 0,
         server_port    => undef,
+        start_time     => [Time::HiRes::gettimeofday],
         uploads        => {},
         uri            => '',
     };

Dependencies

Change History