Productivity Sauce

Collect and Analyze Web Stats with SlimStat

Piwik is an excellent open source alternative to Google Analytics, but it might be overkill if you are in the market for a lightweight web analytics solution. In this case, SlimStat can be what you are looking for. This no-frills application is easy to deploy, and it collects all essential data about your visitors and presents them in an easy-to-comprehend form. SlimStat comes with a simple setup wizard which guides you through the installation process. Once SlimStat is up and running, insert the <script type="text/javascript" src="/slimstat/?js"></script> line into the pages you want to track. Alternatively, you can embed the following tracking code into your PHP code:

<?php
@include_once( $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/slimstat/stats_include.php' );
?>

SlimStat's clean and functional interface makes it easy to view and analyze the collected data. The Summary panel gives you a quick overview of key data, including number of hits, visits, and unique IP addresses.

Here, you'll also find other useful information, such as entry and exit pages, countries where your visitors come from, referrers as well as hardware and software configurations (operating systems, browsers, screen resolutions, etc.). The bar to the right contains several filters which can come in handy when you need to view only a specific slice of the collected data. Using the Calendar module, you can view data for a given date, while a handful of drop-down lists let you filter data by certain criteria such as operating systems, browsers, countries, languages, and so on.

Better yet, SlimStat sports a mobile-friendly interface, so you can view and analyze the data from your mobile device of choice.