Creating My Own Web Analytics Tool

Keeping track of unique website visitors, total hits and more

Recently I have created my own analytics tool similar -all be it with a lot less features- to Google Analytics. There are a few reasons why I chose to create my own tool rather than using an existing solution. First of all, I like to work on smaller scoped projects like this, it’s fun, it’s a great learning opportunity and the project can be used productively once it’s finished. I also know exactly how it works and how to use it. And the final reason is data security: no data is send to any 3rd parties and I can control where, which and how much data is stored.

Recently I like to give my projects better names than just “Analytics Tool”, so I have named the new tool “Magpie”, because I like birds and they are very smart and observant birds, so it’s a fitting name.

Technologies

Years ago I had already made my own analytics tool, which I have been using ever since. However, it has become quite outdated since then. It’s not very detailed, isn’t easy to use and is written only in php. Because I would have needed to redo most of it anyway, I started from scratch with the new tool.

Unlike the pure php based old solution, Magpie only uses php on the backend and is completely JavaScript based on the frontend. This has a few advantages: it can be used on servers without php, is easier to use and it doesn’t slow down page loading. While looking into the async…