The decision to have Piwik added to the Softaculous repository of scripts is very much in line with our vision to make Piwik the best Open Source alternative to Google Analytics. The Support team at Softaculous was very responsive and is committed to including updates to Piwik as they become available.

If your host supports Softaculous and you are considering the switch to Piwik as your Web Analytics application of choice then this auto install script is definitely the option for you!

In a few simple steps you can have Piwik up and running in no time:

1. Login to your host and look for Software/Services.
2. In Softaculous there is a 'Polls and Survey' Category. Expand the category and Piwik will be there. Click on it.
3. You will see an 'Install' TAB. Click it…



4. Fill in the various details and Submit…



5. That's it, you are done!

Please email us your experience installing Piwik using Softaculous together with any other comments at: hello (at) piwik.org

We have decided on using IRC, like Wordpress and many others do for their meetings. Join us in the first Piwik IRC meetup!

Piwik meetup #1

- Date: Thurs March 4th, 2pm UTC
- Duration: 30min
- IRC #piwik-dev channel

Topics are:

• 0.5.5 release
• new Marketing coordinator role
• translations of the piwik.org website
• Piwik 1.0 planning

To join the chat, you can use the website: http://webchat.freenode.net/ - See also what will be the time in your country at 2pm utc.

Anyone can join, and if you are interested in participating in the project, this is your chance to introduce yourself and get to know others.

Hope to see you there!

Update: meetup logs

(3:00:45 PM) vipsoft: <meetup>
(3:01:16 PM) vipsoft: Agenda:
(3:01:30 PM) vipsoft: * 0.5.5 release
(3:01:39 PM) vipsoft: * new Marketing coordinator role
(3:01:47 PM) vipsoft: * translations of the piwik.org website
(3:01:56 PM) vipsoft: * Piwik 1.0 planning
(3:05:11 PM) mattab: let's start with 0.5.5 release; here is the link to the roadmap: http://dev.piwik.org/trac/query?status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&group=status&milestone=1+-+Piwik+0.5.5
(3:06:08 PM) mattab: a rough estimate is 5/6 days of work to fix these tickets, so release would be around end of next week - any thoughts?
(3:06:59 PM) rschilt: is there an easy way of displaying "assigned" on that trac query?
(3:07:38 PM) vipsoft: That would be the "owner" column
(3:08:04 PM) rschilt: owner and assigned are different fields within trac
(3:08:37 PM) Maciej_: should we do sth about the Piwik javascript code? Currently Piwik is tracking non-javascript browsers but in FAQ we say that it does not http://piwik.org/faq/new-to-piwik/#faq_63
(3:08:41 PM) rschilt: I've always assumed that all tickets have an owner but not all are assigned (active)
(3:08:51 PM) Maciej_: I had a consulting questions about it recently :)
(3:08:55 PM) mattab: Robert, assigned == owned
(3:10:48 PM) mattab: Maciej, good point. I think we should clarify that. What is not working in non JS mode, appart from the browser settings detection, click tracking, resolution?
(3:11:04 PM) rschilt: is it then fair to say that tickets without an owner are not being worked on currently?
(3:11:24 PM) vipsoft: generally, rob: yes
(3:11:44 PM) Maciej_: mattab: page titles, and any other additional params (custom variables)
(3:12:02 PM) mattab: Robert, I will grab the unassigned ones and fix them before the release, except if new devs are keen to play the bug hunt game
(3:12:27 PM) Peter_B: how can i get assigned to a bug?
(3:13:16 PM) mattab: you would have to post a comment asking for it, I don't think by default users can change the assign field (should they be able to?)
(3:13:38 PM) ***vipsoft nods.
(3:14:20 PM) vipsoft: no, should not be able to
(3:15:46 PM) mattab: Maciej, I think we should not count non-JS visits, but we should allow users to do so if they want to. Maybe a setting in the UI? Also, non-js tracking is very useful for things like external websites (Myspace, blogs, craig list postings, etc.) where javascript is not allowed.
(3:15:48 PM) hebbet [~57b07fbd@gateway/web/freenode/x-mfdysummkvuymgns] entered the room.
(3:16:45 PM) Maciej_: It is also useful for mobile browsers.
(3:16:58 PM) Maciej_: Which not neccesarily all support js.
(3:17:13 PM) Maciej_: Maybe let's make a variable in global.ini.php?
(3:17:18 PM) Maciej_: and update FAQ
(3:17:41 PM) mattab: right.. can you please create a ticket and we can have the discussion in there; a variable in global.ini.php sounds good, but non-js tracking disabled by default
(3:17:51 PM) mattab: anything else for 0.5.5? if not, let's move on to talk about Sir Robert "new Marketing coordinator".
(3:18:02 PM) Peter_B: i think the admins should assign. I will notify you, what bugs i could solve
(3:18:22 PM) Maciej_: Ok, I will create a ticket in a minute.
(3:18:27 PM) vipsoft: ok; moving along
(3:18:43 PM) rschilt: hi guys
(3:19:34 PM) mattab: Peter, great thx; Robert, would you like to quickly expose your thoughts and ideas regarding Piwik marketing and community building?
(3:19:51 PM) rschilt: Marketing roadmap: http://dev.piwik.org/trac/wiki/Piwik-Marketing-Roadmap
(3:20:13 PM) rschilt: I see it as a non technical role
(3:20:34 PM) rschilt: still settling in and finding my way around
(3:20:55 PM) rschilt: I think have good code is a must
(3:21:15 PM) rschilt: however there's another side to OSS that deserves attention
(3:21:47 PM) rschilt: There is a definite relation between the success of an OSS project and the degree and quality of community interaction/collaboration.
(3:22:17 PM) rschilt: This chat is an example of Piwik community communicating
(3:22:39 PM) rschilt: IThe Piwik "community" is made up of: Piwik Users, Core Team, Contributors, Sponsors and related communities (Eg: WP, Joomla etc…) - perhaps even someone that reads or knows about Piwik is also part of the community.
(3:23:01 PM) mattab: agreed, I think the blog could be used more to communicate too, most piwik users have it loaded in the piwik dashboard or their rss feeds
(3:23:31 PM) rschilt: And there exists a relation between the success of an OSS project and the degree and quality of community interaction/collaboration.
(3:24:30 PM) mattab: our forums are a good place for users, it is really working well so far, there's a lot of activity in there. For developers, we have the piwik-hackers ML but it does not see a lot of traffic recently
(3:25:11 PM) mattab: guys, if you like to review the marketing roadmap and suggest ideas or confirm that these are good ideas, please let Robert know
(3:25:21 PM) Maciej_: I think it's a problem :) i.e. users that subscribe to mailing lists does not often check forum and opposite
(3:25:28 PM) Peter_B: twingly for example made a poll in their community to vote for the priority of features to come up. they still have great reaction on this
(3:25:34 PM) rschilt: robert@piwik.org
(3:25:44 PM) rschilt: A job board is another idea
(3:25:44 PM) Maciej_: is there a way to integrate mailing lists and forum?
(3:26:23 PM) Maciej_: I agree. Job board is cool. Maybe we just need a page in Trac like symfony? http://trac.symfony-project.org/wiki/JobPostings
(3:26:24 PM) rschilt: Please explain Maciej
(3:26:46 PM) rschilt: Or even in the Forum?
(3:27:06 PM) Peter_B: For mailing lists, we could contact nabble for a dedicated piwik section, what do you mean?
(3:27:09 PM) rschilt: I believe we need to expland the topics in the Forum
(3:27:14 PM) Maciej_: so that the forum is just a "frontend" to mailing list
(3:27:33 PM) Maciej_: so users can subscribe to mailing lists instead of checking forum
(3:27:48 PM) vipsoft: The symphony page is more a job wanted board; duplicates our consultants page
(3:28:12 PM) rschilt: The idea of merging different mediums under a common umbrella is a good thing
(3:28:37 PM) mattab: the job board could be a listing of specific skills for specific 1.0 roadmap tickets; also, we sometimes have people contacting us with skills we don't have (ie. AS3) and we could add this in the job board
(3:29:27 PM) rschilt: great thinking guys!
(3:29:45 PM) rschilt: Gives the community the opportunity to contribute in short bursts rather than a big commitment.
(3:30:07 PM) mattab: it seems we can even add nabble to our existing ML; http://n3.nabble.com/more/MailingListRequest.jtp
(3:30:36 PM) rschilt: We provide a project/task brief, skills required etc… and a way for anyone interested to make further enquiries
(3:31:02 PM) rschilt: Perhaps we could setup an email address jobs@piwik.org
(3:31:04 PM) Maciej_: we can also hook there list of tickets
(3:31:11 PM) Maciej_: that needs these skills
(3:31:34 PM) mattab: Maciej, if you want to look at nabble let us know
(3:31:35 PM) rschilt: Someone will need to setup, manage and respond to enquiries
(3:31:42 PM) mattab: Robert, we can have a simple WP page
(3:32:00 PM) bleuroy [~500d2c52@gateway/web/freenode/x-koquzwdvvuyyhmxu] entered the room.
(3:32:11 PM) mattab: alright, let's move on to Piwik.org translations
(3:32:26 PM) mattab: so, we are working with the WPML guys to provide i18n version of piwik.org
(3:32:40 PM) mattab: the first supported language will be german at de.piwik.org and will be contributed by Peter
(3:33:01 PM) rschilt: Onya Peter!
(3:33:14 PM) Mariusz: @Peter if you need any help on that, tell me
(3:33:41 PM) hebbet: i have mailed a few days ago an updated german language file
(3:34:31 PM) Peter_B: Alright Marius, is there an official "internal" mailing list for this?
(3:34:40 PM) mattab: so we will make sure everything works great for this first language; after that, we would ideally want to add more languages :) the key thing is to find a strong community member (or a group of) that are keen to work on translations. So far, only Peter contacted us with the idea, but I expect we might have more contacts once the DE version is online.
(3:35:27 PM) mattab: Peter, all translations go through to Noah, translations@piwik.org
(3:35:51 PM) vipsoft: even website translations?
(3:36:01 PM) Mariusz: How to submit translation? By .po files?
(3:36:03 PM) mattab: no sorry, only language translations
(3:36:15 PM) mattab: I meant software translation
(3:36:24 PM) hebbet: @Mariusz php file in /lang/
(3:36:28 PM) rastatramp_ [~c1881ba4@gateway/web/freenode/x-hunnwdpqjjiwcaoj] entered the room.
(3:36:53 PM) mattab: the website will be translated using the WPML plugin, it's a really simple & clean mechanism
(3:36:58 PM) piwik-trac-bot: http://dev.piwik.org/trac/ticket/1193 Ticket #1193 (non-javascript tracking enabled/disabled in global.ini) created
(3:37:17 PM) rastatramp left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 252 seconds).
(3:37:19 PM) rschilt: now that was cool!
(3:37:27 PM) mattab: kuddos vipsoft for the tracbot thingy
(3:38:01 PM) rschilt: onya vipsoft!
(3:38:18 PM) mattab: guys, any thoughts about the website translation? we plan to translate the full website (pages, faq, docs, and some blog posts). dev.piwik.org will not be translated
(3:38:49 PM) rschilt: separate URL's?
(3:39:19 PM) rschilt: if yes - how will the sites be linked?
(3:39:32 PM) mattab: yep, we follow the wordpress.org model and have it at dev.piwik.org; there will be a language selector in the menu and in the footer
(3:39:44 PM) mattab: sorry, I meant *we have it at de.piwik.org*
(3:39:49 PM) Peter_B: the url's are defined by the localized headline and subdomain
(3:40:48 PM) rschilt: so there'll be a language selector at piwik.org as well?
(3:40:54 PM) Mariusz: wpml should have some kind of flags you could add as a widget. @linking pages
(3:41:09 PM) mattab: we plan to write a documentation for website translators for Peter first, so that we can have future translators get started easily
(3:41:34 PM) Peter_B: i would do an automatic redirect based on browser language, but also a language selector to force another lang
(3:41:36 PM) Maciej_: do we have now a repository for piwik homepage?
(3:41:41 PM) mattab: robert, yes there will be, later we can detect the language in user agent and propose the user with a german browser to go to de.piwik.org directly
(3:42:06 PM) rschilt: Cool!
(3:42:25 PM) mattab: Maciej, what do you mean by repo for the homepage?
(3:42:45 PM) Maciej_: piwik.org site
(3:43:07 PM) mattab: it is in a private repo yes, that a few of us can access (I think you can but not sure)
(3:43:25 PM) Maciej_: (uhm, you can send me it on priv:])
(3:43:32 PM) mattab: sure..
(3:43:40 PM) Maciej_: for translations I think we can make it public
(3:43:53 PM) mattab: translations will be stored in the mysql DB in the WPML tables
(3:43:55 PM) Maciej_: what do you think?
(3:44:00 PM) vipsoft: afk;brb
(3:44:01 PM) Maciej_: Ah
(3:44:05 PM) Maciej_: ok
(3:44:17 PM) mattab: I'm not sure how we can make them public… but we can certainly make it easy for externals to help with the translations
(3:44:52 PM) mattab: ok well, I think the meeting is nearly done now. We'll have one next week, probably at 1PM UTC on Thursday. any feedback?
(3:45:19 PM) rschilt: a productive 1st meet
(3:46:20 PM) mattab: </meetup>

The new extension is available for download from the Piwik in Joomla extensions repository. You can also find a bit more documentation and screenshots on the author's blog at: A piwik integration to Joomla 1.5.

If you have a flair for communications, marketing, and/or business development, send us an email: hello@piwik.org

The Marketing and Community Coordinator's responsibilities would be to:

• perform periodic SWOT analysis to identify feature gaps against the "competition"
• liase with prospective sponsors on how they can contribute
• identify partnership opportunities with other open source projects (e.g. self-hosted web applications)
• liase with partners and negotiate reciprocal agreements (e.g. back links, press releases, integration)
• help guide the Product vision: survey users to flesh out the high-level user requirements for new features
• design landing pages/campaigns/goals to track the success of cross-promotion
• identifie missing help, improve website content, create new content
• organize a design contest for Piwik UI improvement
• maintain Piwik's list of features
• prepare press kit, marketing material, maybe decide on a final logo for the project
• have a strong responsibility in an active and successful open source project

You will be working with the existing Piwik team from around the globe, communicating via emails or skype. Ideally, you will take a valuable role in the project and help achieve our objectives for Piwik and the community.

We are looking forward to reading your messages,

Thank you and long live to open source web analytics fans,
The Piwik team

Conversion tracking is the main scoreboard for any web campaign. If you are serious with what you are doing, setting up goals is a required step for reporting on how your traffic affects the bottom-line.

Conversions follow the 80/20 principle. This principle suggests that roughly 20% of your traffic brings 80% of the earnings. This moves way beyond simple tracking tools where your measured traffic goes in and out of your website without any meaningful impact. Brand, exposure, and activity are all key components of an effective website, but conversion is where all the money is.

The measure of website's success is getting quality traffic from users that do what you want them to do.  In order for anything to be "converted", users must be able to complete a concrete action within your website. Thus, the game lies on optimizing your website to make that theoretical 20% work effectively for you.

Statistics & screenshot's courtesy of http://www.theimalliance.com

Using Piwik Goal Tracking

Goal tracking is a Piwik Plugin in its early stages of development. While there will be much more features in store for future releases, the basic functionality is more than enough to track simple conversions in your website.

Click the Goals located in the main navigation. This will bring you to the overview page where your goals are listed

To start with a new conversion filter, click 'add a new goal'. This will bring you to the goal setup. Fill in your Goal Name (make it descriptive… and inspiring) then click one of the Goal triggers.

In this setup, a goal is accomplished when users visit a given URL, clicks on a link to an external website, or downloads a file.

You can track external links with your affiliate id, visitors that go to your landing page or just about any action on your website. For advanced uses, you can also trigger a goal conversion using the Javascript trackGoal method (see Javascript API documentation).

Finally, add a dollar value to your goal. This value can either be a true monetary value (i.e. based off direct sales) or an arbitrary value to simply let you know how your site is doing. For example, a visitor submitting an inquiry in the contact form could mean $1 for your business. This will fine-tune the goals that you want to set and let you know what the real score is.

Below is a real goal using the exact methods above that was tracked on http://www.theimalliance.com

Also a very welcome and nice touch is the ability to instantly segment right from your main dashboard without even having to go into the goals section.

Click on that little green flag and instantly you can see the conversion statistics by source, and on many of the other widgets (including by keyword and as said, many other types).

This was a tracking based on members signing into various services or affiliate programs, using goal tracking to track.

We also used to track outgoing link clicks and optimize heavily on what was getting the largest click outs each month as you know its a hot topic then.

The above is for a period of 2.5 months (June to Aug 15th)

Even in its early stages, people can get a lot of benefits with Piwik Goal tracking

Stronger Guidance in Optimizing your Website - Once you get ample flow of traffic, your next job is to capture the profitable segment from the mass traffic. By analyzing the behavior of users that gets conversions, you can further optimize your website for better conversion rates.

Your Data is your OWN - What you have is all yours. No one can take a snoop without your permission. This is the one reason why more enterprises are turning to Piwik for self-hosted analytics solution. If you want to build the umbrella of trust with your clients, then this is a good first step to show that you are serious in keeping their data safe.

Create Custom Reports easily - With the embedding feature and open API, you can create custom conversion reports for yourself and your clients without having to go through hoops. You do not need any more formatting done compared to what Piwik gives you.

There's an app for that! - When it comes to nitty-gritty tracking where the client demands the most accurate reporting, Piwik makes it easy with custom applications. For example, you can create a custom Adobe Air app with real-time tracking for your clients so that they can view analytics from their desktop.

In addition, you do not have to depend on third-party providers to deliver these features to you. Instead, you can go in and change the code as it fits you. This works well for developers running a tight shop and rely on full integration between their products/goals.

Real-time tracking - Piwik goal tracking happens in real time, so once a visitor acts one on of your goals, the data is added to your dashboard.

More features will be introduced to this plug-in as it develops. Features in-line includes:

• conversion table display by search engine, country, keyword, campaign, etc. in the Goal overview report
• widgets support in the main dashboard
• deeper time structure in reporting conversions
• and many more.

Get into it and start tracking goals.  Piwik is only getting better.

Cheers

Marc Lindsay

After only one year and a half, Piwik has reached significant milestones: 150,000 downloads, 29 translations, thousands of active users and community members, and a growing developer community.

Many thanks to the Piwik users, developers, testers, translators… together we are building the best open source web analytics framework, and getting close to a 1.0 release (planned for early 2010!).

For more information, check out the Sourceforge interview for answers to these questions

• Why and how did you get started?
• Who is the software's intended audience?
• What are a couple of notable examples of how people are using your software?
• What are the system requirements for your software, and what do people need to know about getting it set up and running?
• What gave you an indication that your project was becoming successful?
• What has been your biggest surprise?
• What has been your biggest challenge?
• Why do you think your project has been so well received?
• What advice would you give to a project that's just starting out?
• Where do you see your project going?
• What's on your project wish list?
• How do you coordinate the project?
• What are you most proud of?

Or check out the screenshot of the interview below:

Note: this entry was published 2 months after the Project of the month award - we were busy coding during the summer

Piwik won the ‘Best of Open Source Enterprise Applications (Web Analytics)’ in Infoworld’s annual BOSSIE Awards. The awards “recognize the best free and open source software the world has to offer to businesses, IT professionals, and productive individuals who rely on computers to get work done.”

Selected by InfoWorld’s editorial and test center staff, other winners in the enterprise category include DimDim, Magento, and SugarCRM.

Stay tuned, the Piwik team is planning new features and improvements to the plugin framework, which will help the community and enterprise leverage Piwik as a web analytics framework.

Thank you all for your support!

This is the first post of a new series all about "Using Piwik Effectively" and in a live environment.  Designed to help both businessman & hobbyist make the most out of Piwik.

Analytics Set Free - No More Constraints

There is no doubt that we are now in a world where digital data, bits & bytes, 1's & 0's all have a value, and a very significant value at that.  Just look at Google as a classical example of how valuable the digital world has now become.

Without data Google would have nothing to work with and I would be out of a job.

Previously when using say radio advertising or TV slots it has been a very hit and miss sort of game.  You don’t have an in-depth view into EXACTLY what it is that your viewer is looking for, so you would have to profile a demographic and then hope your offer or advert was appealing enough to spark interest.

Now bring it into today's digital world and you can track almost everything.

This puts an immense power in the beholder of the most data as not only would you know how people are using the internet, but you would also have so many small bits of data around each visitor that you are now able to start to profile your visitor or future customer.

So how on earth does this relate to Piwik?

Well…..

Let’s suppose you are using another of the many large third party tracking programs, who do you think owns all of that valuable data that is being tracked from your site?

It's certainly not you.  Sure you may be able to analyze that data and see some nice pretty reports, but at the end of the day that data does not belong to you and you are confined within the restraints that the third-party solution would put on you.

Now just imagine for a moment that you had access to a completely free piece of software that let you take control over your sites and the data collected from them….

Welcome To Piwik

Piwik is the ONLY software of its kind around that gives you total control over everything and the ability to expand and use your own data beyond your wildest dreams…

So on with the seven reasons.

#1 You Own The Data

This is one of the biggest reasons you would want to move to Piwik (this combined with #2 & 3) below and it becomes a knockout.

#2 Fully Expandable Feature Set Just Like Wordpress

We all know that wordpress out of the box is nothing special.  It’s just another blog solution, until you start adding in plugins to extend functionality.  You could almost say the same about the Iphone, it’s the applications that make it.

Well this is one feature that makes Piwik REALLY shine out, the developers when setting out to build the ultimate free open source tracking system developed it with expansion in mind and built into it a plugin system that lets you just tap on entire new modules of function with simply a few mouse clicks.

This is HUGE when combined with #1 & #3

#3 API Developer Access

Complete API access is something that has been built into Piwik right from the very core.  This means that you can access any data from within the current functions of Piwik and easily import it into your own application to even further enhance your experience.

If you need to access more data or access it differently then you can easily create a new plugin from #2 to handle and work with that data, this will then make it available as an API.

In case the alarm bells have not gone off in your head just yet let me put this in another way.

Let’s say that you wanted to be able to see the top 3 pages viewed by visitors by country.  No worries all you need to do is create a new plugin that adds that functionality in and hey presto you can now do this.  But taking this even further.

With the combination of points #1, #2 & #3 you can now create your own custom applications (adobe air, .NET, php or any other language you like) that can import any of this data and then use it however it likes.
Imagine if you could have a desktop application that when you opened it could show you the following at a glance.

1.    How much you had made today in sales & from what products.
2.    A comparison of today vs the same day last month.
3.    The weekly average of your sales also in comparison to last week.
4.    Your top performing traffic sources by ROI (because you custom created a plugin that let you set a specific traffic referrer by advertising budget with them)
5.    The top pages that converted into a sale for you

This is just a simple example of how you now have an ROI & Commerce relevant application based entirely off your Piwik data.

Amazing right?

(Feel free to get in touch with me about developing custom Adobe Air applications I am looking for someone to give us a hand).

#4 Real Time Tracking

As its on your own server you can refresh stats as much as you want and get up to the second traffic stats.

#5 Total Privacy

Do you really know what all of these third party services are doing with your data?  What if it were in any way able to help your competitor gain an advantage over you?

Not anymore you have Piwik

#6 It’s Free

Hey free is always good, just this good has sugar coated on top.  Of course it is important to note that there are server costs or hosting costs though if you are running a few websites this is already covered.

#7 It Will Make You More Money

If data is valuable, and you now own all of your data, by default you have increased your wealth digitally.  You can now very easily run custom search queries or strings across all of your sites, across all converted goals or products and find trends that you may never have even noticed.

Piwik being only 1 year old and already covering as much ground as it does really sets the future for what you can expect from Piwik.

As you can see Piwik really kicks butt and is a serious contender to the analytics game, one that in my opinion gives you more power than any of them.

I know it is giving us an edge over our competition by letting us develop custom applications and plugins that provide data in way that has never before been achieved.

Over the coming weeks I will be posting more Piwik guides on how you can leverage Piwik even further in a real environment with real sales coming through the door, these will be live case studies on sites making well over 7 figures.

Please if you have any queries or questions about topics you would like covered in this  Using Piwik Effectively, Marketing Series feel free to post them as a comment and I will take note of them all.

Cheers

Marc Lindsay

Inspired by Remy Damour's code contribution, planning and redevelopment of piwik.js began over 9 months ago. Over this period, we continued to maintain the legacy piwik.js while developing this new and improved version. We looked at the APIs of the "Big 3". We heard your complaints. We read your suggestions. We tackled your support requests. And after many code reviews and test cycles, we believe it's time to unleash the code.

On behalf of the Piwik community, I'd like to thank everyone who submitted bug reports, suggestions, and input that drove this rewrite.

Highlights

The new piwik.js is:

• Object-oriented.
  Multiple trackers on the same web page is now possible. And with the exception of legacy support, the code lives entirely in the Piwik namespace.
• Backwards compatible.
  You don't have to update the tracking code on your pages. Note: we have deprecated piwik_track(), piwik_log(), and global variables for configuration but backward compatibility will always remain.
• XHTML-friendly.
  The code no longer modifies the DOM. Specifically, the calls to document.write() — to attach the transparent 1×1 web bug image or to detect plugins in Internet Explorer — are history.
• Less restrictive.
  The code is more forgiving about where you insert the new tracking code in your pages. Also, custom data is now JSON stringified and no longer limited to a flat structure.
• Industry-conforming.
  The code now tracks the click event instead of mousedown.
• More customizable.
  Check out the API. For example, you can now define your own CSS classes for piwik_ignore, piwik_download, and piwik_link.
• Heavily tested.
  We added automated unit tests via QUnit. The code also passes JSLint and (Microsoft's) JavaScript Leak Detector.

Documentation

You can find the updated documentation for the revamped JavaScript tracking API here:

http://piwik.org/docs/javascript-tracking/

As always, we would appreciate your feedback. Thank you for using, supporting, and promoting Piwik.

This post is from Anthon Pang (aka "vipsoft"), new rockstar developer in the Piwik team.

Click on the image to view the real time Piwik Download Counter

This shows just how well received an open source web analytics alternative to Google, Yahoo and others is to the community. Thank you all for your support, messages, patches, bug reports, feedback, blog posts, this has been a very exciting journey!

Evolution of downloads

Check out the graph below that shows the evolution of Piwik downloads over months, since the first public release in March 2008:

Would you like to see this graph growing over the next few months? You can make it happen! We are working hard to release Piwik 1.0 (see the Piwik 1.0 roadmap) and YOU can help. We listed a list of things you can do to help, whether technically or creatively. Check out the list of 18 ways you can contribute to Piwik.

Stay tuned for future announcements. Thank you so much!