Everyone likes to have a look at her/his statistics. Mainly we rely on third party services like Statcounter or Sitemeter, or even awstats on the server, but those statistic modules don’t offer that many options as they come as they are, and most of time something is missing. Professional raw log analytics software costs money.
Luckily there is a free, open source statistics module available in the form of PHPMyVisites. All you need is your own webspace with Apache, PHP and Mysql.
Main inconvenience (for people interested in this feature) is that phpMyVisites doesn’t display IPs, although every Apache server stores IPs in the logs. Reason behind this limitation is that IP tracking has become illegal in countries such as Germany. Privacy, nuff said. You would have to ask everyone to agree with you tracking IPs not to breach the law, thus explaining why the team behind PHPMyVisites has chosen not to implement this. Lets move on.
PHPMyVisites has a slick interface and offers the user almost everything on could desire. No 100 or 150 entries log limit like the free versions of Statcounter and Sitemeter, you can browse the logs for every single day (a feature which Awstats doesn’t offer) and most other common features, features also offered by other free services.
Personally I do think the best feature is the no-limit on the amount of log entries. Another interesting feature is that you can see how long people averagely stay on which site.
Installation is easy : you can install it in a new database, or even use the db of your existing site/blog. Just as with every other statistics module, you need to insert some lines of code in your site (Frank Bueltge has written a small plugin for WP) and you can start analyzing the visits. If you haven’t gotten one yet, I would strongly advice you to get a decent and free FTP-client such as SmartFTP (for Windows - *nix users don’t need a GUI :P).
Probably most people will still use third party trackers like Sitemeter and Statcounter to track IPs and to see who stayed how long and visited what pages, but PHPMyVisites come in handy if you want to analyze longer periods, and check the popularity of individual pages. A good and free alternative, but no final replacement (yet) for third party modules.
Visit PHPMyVisites here, try the online demo here. Download page.
7 have made me smarter ↓
1 Rik // Sep 20, 2006 at 7:48 pm// View all comments by Rik //
Sounds like fun! Off I go to get the new toy…
2 Croaker // Sep 21, 2006 at 2:19 pm// View all comments by Croaker //
It does sound cool but can it tell me who these local lurkers arethatread my blog everyday but never comment!
3 Franky // Sep 21, 2006 at 2:22 pm// View all comments by Franky //
No it won’t provide you with IPs, only with provider stats. Besides that you’ld need someone to host it for you on her/his webspace as it needs webspace. The code surely can be integrated, just as every other script, in blogger but webspace is needed to host it.
Those lurkers are all your secret female admirers Croaker.
4 Bug // Sep 21, 2006 at 3:38 pm// View all comments by Bug //
Hmmm I’ma have to install this and see what’s up, thanks for the tip hun :)
5 ensellitis // Sep 22, 2006 at 7:29 pm// View all comments by ensellitis //
on my server, i actually have Awstats, and several others. i used to use slimstats, which is actually pretty nice. i will give this one a try
6 Alok // Aug 19, 2008 at 11:06 pm// View all comments by Alok //
Is it possible to install PhpMysiteVisites on blogger. I am using Google analytics right now for my blog, but would like to try out this. Let me know if there is a friendly how-to available
7 Franky // Aug 20, 2008 at 10:00 am// View all comments by Franky //
Alok, phpMyVisits can not be installed on Blogspot, unless you can host the files on another webspace where you have FTP access.