Recently we began a study of free web based analytics. Due to logistical reasons we had to exclude self-hosted options, but we still wanted to point out an option which has some good promise for the future. Piwik is an open source source script aiming to be a self-hosted Google Analytics. What does that mean exactly? Piwik offers many of the same functionality as Google Analytics, with a major difference, you own the data. In short, it’s a great option for those that have inherent trust of the third parties controlling their data, or are looking for a script they can tinker with and modify to their own needs. You can see the working demo here. Exciting isn’t it? Great user interface, the ability to create your own plug-ins and access to the raw data. There is also a great team behind Piwik. Many of the developers working on the project were also behind the successful phpMyVisites.

So where do you get started?First make sure you have the right stuff to get started. To run Piwik your host needs a couple of things:

* PHP version 5.1.3 or greater
* MySQL version 4.1 or greater
* (enabled by default) PHP extension pdo and pdo_mysql

If you pass these minimum requirements, you can move forward with installing Piwik. But wait! Before you do, though, we have one piece of advice. As this script is still in development we do not recommend you fully abandon Google Analytics–yet. We suggest you try out Piwik and stay current with its development. If we go by what the goals are for Piwik version 1.0, (they are currently at 0.2.34) this will be a very powerful tool.

Please note: while open source means free, it also means its up to you to stay current on bugs, security issues and to ensure you have the space for all the data. Piwik logs are not automatically purged, but can be with some modification of the script. This will become a standard feature in Piwik 1.0, so for those who fear source code, we suggest you wait. If you are ready to start playing or a tad adventurous, download Piwik 0.2.34 here.