Server Log Analytics with Piwik

Did you know? All web servers generate access log files which contain all of the requests made to the server. You can import and analyse your web server logs in Piwik! A log script lets you parse and analyze visitor server log, including IP address, URL, user agent, referrer URL and search keyword, campaign info, etc.

This page explains how to use Piwik Free Web Analytics software to import your log files into your Piwik server for analysis and reporting. For default Piwik tracking, consider using the Javascript tracker.

How to parse logs with Piwik Log Analytics

To use Log Analytics, you need the latest version of Piwik, Python and servers access logs to import in Piwik.

The documentation is in this user guide: How to run the Log Analytics tool

Business Use Case

Imagine that you are a web hosting company with a few hundred customers. Many web hosts would like to offer modern, beautiful, powerful, Free/Libre web analytics to their customers. You can do this with Piwik, learn more in our Log Analytics Business Use Case “How to integrate Piwik Log Analysis in an existing business infrastructure”.

Log Analytics FAQ

See the Log Analytics FAQ for answers to your most burning questions!

Features of the Log Analytics and Piwik toolset

• Transforms gigabytes of server access logs into insightful and beautiful analytics dashboards.
• All 50+ Piwik features are automatically supported: goal tracking based on URL, IP Anonymization, real time Visitor log, search keyword, page tracking, etc.
• Keep control of your analytics data in your own database.
• build custom plugins or reuse the extensive APIs.
• protect visitor privacy with IP anonymization.
• delete old logs feature to keep database size under control.
• DoNotTrack support.
• Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI compliant.
• EU Data Privacy law compliant.
• Recognizes most server log formats (Apache, Nginx, IIS, etc.). Let us know if your log format is not recognized and we will add it to the list.
• Migrate from AWStats and Urchin easily by importing your historical logs into Piwik. Invest in the future by importing your logs in Piwik.
• Automatically exclude bots (search engines, spam bots, etc.) from reports. There is an option to track bots and assign them a custom variable to differentiate them from human visitors.
• You own the Free/Libre software

Demo of Piwik in parsing log files mode

We have setup a separate Piwik demo to showcase Piwik running in log import mode, at: demo-log-analytics.piwik.org

The demo shows the Piwik reports generated from the Nginx access logs of the website forum.piwik.org. We created 2 websites in this Piwik server, to showcase 1) the Default log import mode and 2) Full mode with parameters –enable-http-errors –enable-http-redirects –enable-static –enable-bots

Feedback: your feature requests

Please post your feature requests and feedback directly on this ticket. If you are a Python developer, check out the source code and consider submitting a pull request.

We really appreciate if you can suggest improvements and report bugs.

We hope you enjoy tracking your server logs with Piwik!