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Firstly congrats on both delivering genuine value to ppl and making a nice living from it :-) > I don't use Google Analytics or any other fancy third-party app

Firstly congrats on both delivering genuine value to ppl and making a nice living from it :-) > I don't use Google Analytics or any other fancy third-party application that must be included via JS. I use Piwik that I check occasionally I'm not trying to be a dick, genuine question, I thought Piwik was a JS include? Or do you feed it web server logs or something? I ask because I currently run a niche site that is doing very well. I'm currently turning this into a general purpose platform for others to use. For the former site I just went with Google Analytics, but for the latter I'm now trying Piwik and am curious about other peoples experiences.

WA 13y ago
Piwik is a JS include, but it is on my own server. My statement wasn't accurate: I don't use third-party external hosted JS files. Why? Security, privacy, performance. GA is probably relatively trustworthy in terms of security, but you never know. Privacy: Gone with GA. Performance: If the included library isn't far away, it's faster. So, Piwik is good enough for me. I recently installed it on a VPS but from the same hoster in the same location. The performance is still slick, but a tiny bit of work is now off the server and security-wise it's better to have as few third-party libraries and applications running parallel to my web app. The most limiting thing was that I rent a managed server that doesn't allow too many custom things. Piwik is relatively ineffective memory-wise in generating reports over months or years, if you have traffic like me (about 50K visitors per week or so). The managed server would always kill the process, because it consumed too many resources and took too long. Never found a work-around. Now, on the VPS, I can do whatever I want and that helps. This just as a warning if you're planning to run Piwik in an environment that might have limits in resource allocation. Feature-wise, Piwik is totally perfect. As mentioned before, I don't track many metrics anyways. It's just a reference for keywords, which keywords converted, where people come from.

WA 13y ago

Piwik is a JS include, but it is on my own server. My statement wasn't accurate: I don't use third-party external hosted JS files. Why? Security, privacy, performance. GA is probably relatively trustworthy in terms of security, but you never know. Privacy: Gone with GA. Performance: If the included library isn't far away, it's faster. So, Piwik is good enough for me. I recently installed it on a VPS but from the same hoster in the same location. The performance is still slick, but a tiny bit of work is now off the server and security-wise it's better to have as few third-party libraries and applications running parallel to my web app. The most limiting thing was that I rent a managed server that doesn't allow too many custom things. Piwik is relatively ineffective memory-wise in generating reports over months or years, if you have traffic like me (about 50K visitors per week or so). The managed server would always kill the process, because it consumed too many resources and took too long. Never found a work-around. Now, on the VPS, I can do whatever I want and that helps. This just as a warning if you're planning to run Piwik in an environment that might have limits in resource allocation. Feature-wise, Piwik is totally perfect. As mentioned before, I don't track many metrics anyways. It's just a reference for keywords, which keywords converted, where people come from.