Matomo compatible with MySQL and MariaDB

Since our first public release Matomo uses the open source database server MySQL to store the analytics data.

Matomo is also compatible with MariaDB. MariaDB is an enhanced, drop-in replacement for MySQL.

Upgrading to MariaDB

Many users from our community as well as Matomo Scalability Experts have confirmed that using MariaDB for Matomo has several advantages. MariaDB has in some cases significantly improved query performance and reliability of Matomo. Because MariaDB 5.5 is a complete drop-in-replacement for MySQL 5.5, upgrading can be as easy as running apt-get install mariadb-server (or equivalent for your platform). Existing third party techologies such as TokuDB (FAQ) and Galera are fully compatible with MariaDB.

Learn more about upgrading to MariaDB: Upgrading from MySQL to MariaDB

In the future, Matomo will stay compatible with both MySQL and MariaDB.

We’re excited to announce that our third Matomo (Piwik) Community Meetup will be held in Berlin on Tuesday, the 4th of August, 2015. Don’t miss this great opportunity to connect with other users and meet the core team behind Matomo. It’s free, so REGISTER TODAY! And maybe you would like to share your Matomo use case? We’re also waiting for your presentation ideas.

We will cover some of the upcoming features, discuss the future of Matomo, share tricks and hacks to help you get the most out of your Matomo platform, and socialise. If you use Matomo to improve your websites and apps, or are just generally curious about digital analytics and marketing – this event is not to be missed. As our core team is scattered all over the world, this will be a rare opportunity for you to meet and talk to us all at once – especially for those of you interested in the platform, integrating your app with Matomo, and building plugins.

After the official part, we would like to enjoy drinks with all the participants in the nearby bars. We hope you will be able to join us!

All Matomo community members are warmly invited to take part in the meetup!

Matomo Community Meetup 2015

When?

Tuesday, the 4th of August, from 5-9pm

Where?

Kulturbrauerei
Schönhauser Allee
Prenzlauer Berg area
Berlin, Germany
exact directions tbc.

Languages:

English and German

Book tickets:

BOOK YOUR FREE INVITATION HERE

Open call for YOUR presentation ideas

We would also like to hear how you use Matomo – we’ll be delighted if you’d share your interesting use case during the Meetup. Please send your presentation ideas (speaking time: 5 to 7 minutes)! Deadline: 20th of July 2015.

Matomo Named A Leader in TrustRadius Digital Analytics TrustMap™ for Small Businesses.

Matomo Rated Strong Performer in TrustRadius Digital Analytics TrustMap ™ for Enterprise Analytics.

Rankings Based on User Ratings and Market Segment Adoption

Learn more

The TrustRadius TrustMaps™ guide features reviews from authenticated TrustRadius users on a number of digital analytics platforms from the biggest names in the digital analytics industry. You can download your free copy of the buyer’s guide here (Note: there is a form to fill before you can download the PDF).

Read the TrustRadius user reviews about Matomo on their website.

Or view other awards won by Matomo here.

Read on to learn more about this exciting release.

Why did we create DeviceDetector?

Our previous library UserAgentParser only had the possibility to detect operating systems and browsers. But as more and more traffic is coming from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets it is getting more and more important to know which devices are used by the websites visitors.

To ensure that the device detection within Matomo (Piwik) will gain the required attention, so it will be as accurate as possible, we decided to move that part of Matomo into a separate project, that we will maintain separately. As an own project we hope the DeviceDetector will gain a better visibility as well as a better support by and for the community!

DeviceDetector is hosted on GitHub at piwik/device-detector. It is also available as composer package through Packagist.

How DeviceDetector works

Every client requesting data from a webserver identifies itself by sending a so-called User-Agent within the request to the server. Those User Agents might contain several information such as:

• client name and version (clients can be browsers or other software like feed readers, media players, apps,…)
• operating system name and version
• device identifier, which can be used to detect the brand and model.

For Example:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.4.2; Nexus 5 Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/32.0.1700.99 Mobile Safari/537.36

This User Agent contains following information:

Operating system is Android 4.4.2, client uses the browser Chrome Mobile 32.0.1700.99 and the device is a Google Nexus 5 smartphone.

What DeviceDetector currently detects

DeviceDetector is able to detect bots, like search engines, feed fetchers, site monitors and so on, five different client types, including around 100 browsers, 15 feed readers, some media players, personal information managers (like mail clients) and mobile apps using the AFNetworking framework, around 80 operating systems and nine different device types (smartphones, tablets, feature phones, consoles, tvs, car browsers, cameras, smart displays and desktop devices) from over 180 brands.

Note: Matomo itself currently does not use the full feature set of DeviceDetector. Client detection is currently not implemented in Matomo (only detected browsers are reported, other clients are marked as Unknown). Client detection will be implemented into Matomo in the future, follow #5413 to stay updated.

Performance of DeviceDetector

Our detections are currently handled by an enormous number of regexes, that are defined in several .YML Files. As parsing these .YML files is a bit slow, DeviceDetector is able to cache the parsed .YML Files. By default DeviceDetector uses a static cache, which means that everything is cached in static variables. As that only improves speed for many detections within one process, there are also adapters to cache in files or memcache for speeding up detections across requests.

How can users help contribute to DeviceDetector?

Submit your devices that are not detected yet

If you own a device, that is currently not correctly detected by the DeviceDetector, please create a issue on GitHub
In order to check if your device is detected correctly by the DeviceDetector go to your Matomo server, click on ‘Settings’ link, then click on ‘Device Detection’ under the Diagnostic menu. If the data does not match, please copy the displayed User Agent and use that and your device data to create a ticket.

Submit a list of your User Agents

In order to create new detections or improve the existing ones, it is necessary for us to have lists of User Agents. If you have a website used by mostly non desktop devices it would be useful if you send a list of the User Agents that visited your website. To do so you need access to your access logs. The following command will extract the User Agents:

zcat ~/path/to/access/logs* | awk -F'"' '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -n20000 > /home/piwik/top-user-agents.txt

If you want to help us with those data, please get in touch at devicedetector@piwik.org

Submit improvements on GitHub

As DeviceDetector is free/libre library, we invite you to help us improving the detections as well as the code. Please feel free to create tickets and pull requests on Github.

What’s the next big thing for DeviceDetector?

Please check out the list of issues in device-detector issue tracker.

We hope the community will answer our call for help. Together, we can build DeviceDetector as the most powerful device detection library!

Happy Device Detection,

Snowden revelations, a year ago today

On June 5, 2013 the Guardian newspaper published the first of Edward Snowden’s astounding revelations. It was the first of a continuous stream of stories that pointed out what we’ve suspected for a long time: that the world’s digital communications are being continuously spied upon by nation states with precious little oversight.

Unfortunately, mass surveillance is affecting the internet heavily. The Internet is a powerful force that can promote democracy, innovation, and creativity, but it’s being subverted as a tool for government spying. That is why Matomo has decided to join Reset The Net.

June 5, 2014 marks a new year: a year that will not just be about listening to the inside story of mass surveillance, but a new year of fighting back!

How do I protect myself and others?

Reset the Net is asking everyone to help by installing free software tools that are designed to protect your privacy on a computer or a mobile device.

Reset the Net is also calling on websites and developers to add surveillance resistant features such as HTTPS and forward secrecy.

Participate in ResetTheNet online protest

Have you got your own website, blog or tumblr? Maybe you can show the Internet Defense League’s “Cat Signal!” on your website.Get the code now to run the Reset the Net splash screen or banner to help make privacy viral on June 5th.

Message from Edward Snowden

Evan from FFTF sent us this message from Edward Snowden and we thought we would share it with you:

One year ago, we learned that the internet is under surveillance, and our activities are being monitored to create permanent records of our private lives — no matter how innocent or ordinary those lives might be.

Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same. That’s why I’m asking you to join me on June 5th for Reset the Net, when people and companies all over the world will come together to implement the technological solutions that can put an end to the mass surveillance programs of any government. This is the beginning of a moment where we the people begin to protect our universal human rights with the laws of nature rather than the laws of nations.

We have the technology, and adopting encryption is the first effective step that everyone can take to end mass surveillance. That’s why I am excited for Reset the Net — it will mark the moment when we turn political expression into practical action, and protect ourselves on a large scale.

Join us on June 5th, and don’t ask for your privacy. Take it back.

– Message by Edward Snowden

ResetTheNet privacy pack infographic

Additional Resources

Configure Matomo for Security and Privacy

• Turn on automatic SSL redirection in your Matomo.
• Configure Matomo for advanced Privacy.
• Best security practises for Matomo.

More info

• Learn why this matters (EFF)
• Data Privacy Day – Why is privacy important? (Piwik)
• Web Analytics Privacy (Piwik)

Why do we care about tests?

Continuous Integration brings us agility and peace of mind. From the very beginning of Matomo, it was clear to us that writing and maintaining automated tests was a necessity, in order to create a successful open source software platform.

Over the years we have invested a lot of time into writing and maintaining our tests suites. This work has paid off in so many ways! Matomo platform has fewer bugs, fewer regressions, and we are able to release new minor and major versions frequently.

Which parts of Matomo software are automatically tested?

• Matomo back-end in PHP5: we use PHPUnit to write and run our PHP tests: unit tests, integration tests, and system tests.
• piwik.js Tracker: the JS tracker is included into all websites that use Matomo. For this reason, it is critical that piwik.js JavaScript tracker always works without any issue or regression. Our Javascript Tracker tests includes both unit and integration tests.
• Matomo front-end: more recently we’ve started to write JavaScript tests for the user interface partially written in AngularJS.
• Matomo front-end screenshots tests: after each change to Matomo, more than 150 different screenshots are automatically taken. For example, we take screenshots of each of the 8-step installation process, we take screenshots of the password reset workflow, etc. Each of these screenshot is then compared pixel by pixel, with the “expected” screenshot, and we can automatically detect whether the last code change has introduced an undesired visual change. Learn more about Matomo screenshot tests.

How often do we run the tests?

The tests are executed by Travis CI after each change to the Matomo source code. On average all our tests run 20 times per day. Whenever a Matomo developer pushes some code to Github, or when a community member issues a Pull request, Travis CI automatically runs the tests. In case some of the automated tests started failing after a change, the developer that has made the change is notified by email.

Should I use Travis CI?

Over the last six years, we have used various Continuous Integration servers such as Bamboo, Hudson, Jenkins… and have found that the Travis CI is the ideal continuous integration service for open source projects that are hosted on Github. Travis CI is free for open source projects and the Travis CI team is very friendly and reactive! If you work on commercial closed source software, you may also use Travis by signing up to Travis CI Pro.

Summary

Tests make the Matomo analytics platform better. Writing tests make Matomo contributors better developers. We save a lot of time and effort, and we are not afraid of change!

Here is the current status of our builds:
Main build:

PS: If you are a developer looking for a challenge, Matomo is hiring a software developer to join our engineering team in New Zealand.

Here are the slides of my presentation “Analytics for ePortfolios”:

Summary: by using an analytics tool that integrates well with Mahara, such as Matomo (Piwik), Mahara users can benefit from a multitude of insightful analytics reports.

Learn more

Mahara is a web application to build your electronic portfolio. You can create journals, upload files, embed social media resources from the web and collaborate with other users in groups. Mahara is a popular open source project built by a passionate community, and used in universities, schools and companies all over the world.

Mahara Hui is the first kiwi conference on Mahara, the open source ePortfolio system, in New Zealand. This 2-day conference was held at Te Papa in Wellington from 19 to 20 March 2014 (schedule)

Don Christie introduces Matthieu Aubry from the Matomo project. Photo by Evonne Cheung.

Next steps

I’m excited to join the Mahara team at the Mahara Hui Hackfest organised today at Catalyst IT offices. We will brainstorm how to integrate Matomo beautifully within Mahara, and how to ultimately provide students and employees useful analytics on all the content they create!

For 2013 we wish you all the best, but most importantly: health, mindfulness, happiness, and peace. Happy new year!

You can either:
1. DONATE to the whole Matomo project, to help directly fund the new features of Matomo 2.0 OR
2. CROWDFUND a particular feature you are passionate about or your business is interested in using!
–> Our two awesome features we are currently calling funding for:

A killer feature: the ability to get beautiful maps of Countries, with detailed Regions and Cities maps… All in SVG+JS and no more flash in Matomo!

Either way, you will be supporting an amazing project and know you are making a difference towards making the best open source web analytics software in the world! Without your kind donations, we can not continue working on Matomo at the speed we are currently working at. So please, help us!

Merry Christmas

“This year has been incredible in terms of advancements to Matomo. Matomo is now faster and safer to use. We released new versions packed with new features every month or so in 2012 and we hope that 2013 will be even bigger! We are working hard behind the scenes on improving the quality of Matomo and we are now focused on our vision for Matomo 2.0.”

Lastly, we would like to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Years and a big thank you to all of our community for their continued love and support. Be safe and enjoy this precious time with your loved ones. We look forward to bringing you many more surprises up our sleeves in 2013! Viva Matomo!

The piwik_analytics gem provides an easy way to include Matomo into your application without messing up your view templates.

Installation

Add the piwik_analytics Gem to your Gemfile:

gem 'piwik_analytics', '~> 1.0.1'

Do not forget to run

bundle install

! Then run the generator:

rails g piwik_analytics:install

This will install a piwik.yml configuration file into the config directory of your application.

Configuration

Open up config/piwik.yml and edit the settings. Each setting is described in the config file itself.

# Configuration:
#
# disabled
#   false if tracking tag should be shown
# use_async
#   Set to true if you want to use asynchronous tracking
# url
#   The url of your piwik instance (e.g. localhost/piwik/
# id_site
#   The id of your website inside Matomo
#
production:
  piwik:
    id_site: 1
    url: piwik-production.example.com
    use_async: false
    disabled: false

development:
  piwik:
    id_site: 1
    url: piwik-development.example.com
    disabled: true
    use_async: false

test:
  piwik:
    id_site: 1
    url: localhost
    disabled: true
    use_async: false

As you can see, by default Matomo is only enabled in production mode. You can of course enable Matomo in the development or test environment by setting disabled: false. You will then need to fetch the site ID of the website you want to track from Matomo. Login to your Matomo Installation, go to “Settings” and click the “Websites” tab.

In this case the site ID is “1”. As a last step you need to set the URL of your Matomo installation. If your Matomo is hosted under http://example.com/piwik/ you need to set the URL to example.com/piwik (without the trailing slash).

Matomo supports an asynchronous tracking script since version 1.1. In case you want to use asynchronous tracking in your application, simply set use_async: true.

Usage

The gem provides a simple helper that outputs the tracking tag. Inside your application.html.erb (or haml, slim) you can simply add the following snippet just before the closing body tag.

<%= piwik_tracking_tag %>

Make sure you have disabled: false when you test the gem.

Get Support for piwik_analytics

To get support or for further information:

• visit the Project page (Github registration required, English)
• visit the issue tracker (Github registration required, English)
• Also check out my personal blog geekmonkey.org, and source