Website Statistics and Analysis

Website statistics are a valuable tool to help analyse the performance of your website and identify what is working in attracting visitors, and what parts need improvement. This week I set up a number of different setup and configured a number of statistical tools for websites such as Google Analytics, Piwik. Awstats, WordPress statistics plugin and Statcounter. Most of these statistics software and services are free and some have paid for premium versions.

Piwik

Update Piwik, install and set up wordpress plugin for Piwik wp-piwik. Add geo locations to piwik. Generate piwik code and add to multiple websites.

StatCounter

Setup StatCounter and add code to websites, add WordPress plugin for StatCounter to websites configure and test. Keep commercial sites statistics private and hobby and sports club statistics visible to the public

Awstats

Awstats is open source software a perl based log file analyser. It can be configured on most hosting sites, indeed many hosting packages offer it as a configurable option. It analyses the log file of the host, and gleans data from it, it many not have the interpretation which say google analytics for IP addresses etc. but it is a true reflection of what requests were made to the server and logged in the log file