Ask HN: non invasive analytics tool?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1655460

by loup-vaillant • 16 years ago

5 4 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I was wondering if anyone knew of a lightweight, non-invasive web site analytics tool. Something that would just look at my web server's logs, or at least would be undetectable to my visitors.

Also, are such systems limited, compared to Javascript or PHP based tracking?

swwu• 16 years ago

AWStats (http://awstats.sourceforge.net/) is decent if you just want some simple log-based analytics.

Don't know what you mean by limited, but logfile-based analytics software doesn't have access to as much data as software that can use other data sources like cookies (ie it has difficulty tracking sessions).

If I might ask, why exactly do you need to make your analytics completely undetectable to users? In most cases tracking pixels and the like have no effect whatsoever on the user experience.

muyyatin2• 16 years ago

It can be practical if you don't want the site to contain JavaScript (which is nice when using NoScript)

muyyatin2• 16 years ago

You may find AWStats helpful: http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

Most log-based analytics tools cannot filter out bot traffic as well as a JavaScript tool would. Additionally you would be missing other information that could be obtained from JavaScript like supported Flash versions, screen resolution, etc.

nl• 16 years ago

As others have said, AWStats is ok.

Also, are such systems limited, compared to Javascript or PHP based tracking?

Yes. Javascript enabled tracking gives you a lot of additional information. For example: screen resolution, plugins, which link was clicked on a page to get to another page (not referer - the actual link).

It's also possible to track a user's mouse movements on a page (which can give you heatmaps of usage on a page)

Cookie based tracking can show if a user has visited the site previously, and track particular users throughout the site, perhaps over multiple visits.

Ask HN: non invasive analytics tool?

Related Stories