Web analytics made easy. Get nice charts of visits on your site by real humans.
Also on Views, Taxonomy Term or Layout pages, not only nodes.
Zero configuration required, just install the module and wait for the charts
to get populated.
Fully compliant with GDPR, no cookie banner required, as there are no cookies.
No tracking, fingerprinting or collection of personal data of any kind. No 3rd
party involved at all.
Works fine with page cache turned on and with or without asset aggregation
enabled.
Note that only anonymous visits get collected, authenticated users will never
show up in those statistics.
Nowadays the vast majority of web traffic is caused by bots and scrapers, but
it's the human visitors, that actually matter. Things got harder, since
bots started to execute JavaScript. How many humans did actually look at your
website? You'll be astonished, how few that are.
Installation
Install this module using the official Backdrop CMS instructions
No configuration required, just visit the dashboard on
admin/reports/easy-visitor-stats, but a few tweaks are available:
- Tweak the duration to keep data on admin/reports/easy-visitor-stats/settings
(the module ships with sane defaults) - Show charts with animations, if you prefer a little more eye candy
Allow other roles than admin to access the dashboard or raw data by granting
permission on admin/config/people/permissions.
Issues
Bugs and Feature requests should be reported in the Issue Queue
Known Issues
- Parts of the dashboard aren't very accessible (WCAG), as the interactive
charts are images, hard if not impossible to provide useful text alternatives
for. - If a visitor's browser has some script-blocker enabled, those visits won't
get counted. Data collection depends on JavaScript. - Although commonly known bots get filtered out, some might still slip through,
if they're in full disguise (don't give any clue that they're bots).
Current Maintainers
Alternative solutions
This module's not the only solution for web analytics with Backdrop CMS. There
are several, all with their pros and cons.
Backdrop standalone modules
Easy to use, no external dependencies.
Only for nodes (no Views, Layout pages...), does not seem to filter out bots
that execute JavaScript. The reports UI isn't great, just some tables spread
over multiple pages.
Also node based (no Views, Layout pages...). Probably counts all bots and
scrapers, hard to tell what it looks like, ATM it doesn't work with PHP 8.
Backdrop integration of 3rd party solutions
Get all the whistles and bells.
Matomo Analytics and
Google Analytics
For professionals, but pretty complex to set up. Most sites simply don't need
such detailed data, so why collecting in the first place?
Not trivial to comply with GDPR with Matomo, probably impossible with Google
Analytics. The latter for sure requires a cookie banner and consent.
Log based analysis with Webalizer, AWstats or the like
Easy to use if already available and set up.
Requires additional software and access to the web logs. Available OOTB with
some hosting providers, but requires yet another login to access. And those
log based statistics usually aren't great - visually and in terms of relevance.
Credits
Interactive charts on the dashboard are build with
Chart.js, a simple yet flexible JavaScript charting
library for the modern web.
Chart.js is licensed under MIT and maintained
on GitHub.
License
This project is GPLv3 software. See the LICENSE.txt file in this directory for complete text.