Requests & Suggestions

Very interesting idea. Most of the functionality is already implemented as part of other tools (async loading), so it wouldn’t be a problem. I will add it to 3.9.1. A vote for Slimstat would be a good way to say thank you ??

This is an excellent plugin, Camu.

If you could find a way to integrate SlimStats natively inside webservers the like of Apache2 or Nginx in Unix distributions (Ubuntu and so on,) I think you could even make some money, at some point.

Since last year, DigitalOcean has been offering basic VPS “droplets” at a very convenient price, starting from $5 per month; they have a lot of tutorials covering about everything from the installation of a virtual Unix server to its maintenance, and there are flocks of people who have been switching over to them (and to similar companies.) Many previous Hostgator / GoDaddy customers are becoming little developers themselves, building and maintaining their own VPS server (mail server included.)

However, I found out there’s a lack of a decent free Web Stats software (free doesn’t mean one can’t make money from it, for instance offering specially tailored deals to companies all over the web.)

Awstats is an outdated statistics program, even if everybody is still using it. Piwik is a recent Web Stats software, but I think it’s far from being clear, simple and complete as SlimStats is. For starters, you could take a look at how Piwik works, which is interesting. Like in Piwik, you could develop SlimStats with its own Mysql database inside a proper Unix environment. Then, as Piwik does, you could write a lightweight plugin to be used with WordPress, which would only read from the main SlimStats Unix database.

You would then have two SlimStats versions: your WP SlimStats plugin as it is now, plus a separate SlimStats Unix version, and a tiny WordPress plugin integration of the latter. Starting from an almost mainstream distribution like Ubuntu would be great. Piwik has a folder inside the /var/www/ folder (where the WordPress installation resides,) but you could put your “SlimStat Unix” inside its own folder in /etc/slimstats.

Take a look at the many DigitalOcean tutorials on how one deploys a LAMP (Linux-Apache-Mysql-Php) “droplet” with Ubuntu 14.04, and then start from there. The process is quite straightforward, and I’m sure you already have the skills to go through all that.

A few last words: Nginx (it’s a webserver like Apache / Apache2, but it’s slimmer than the latter and less resource-thirsty,) is rapidly gaining its share of the webserver market at the expense of the heavier Apache. You may take that into account as well, and test your software in both environments.

Much food for thought (too much, maybe.) But I’ll be glad if anything of the above is going to stir your interest.

Again, thank you for a great plugin.
This may be the right time for WP SlimStats to take another leap forward.

Best.

M.

Hi again,

this is great, but we currently don’t have any plans to port Slimstat as a stand-alone software. Also because some of the information it collects comes from the WP environment it sits into (current user, categories, permalinks, etc). We believe Piwik is a great tool for stand-alone analytics, and it can easily compete with Google Analytics. However it lacks the native integration with WordPress, that differentiates it from Slimstat. Our business model, at this stage at least, is to continue expanding this integration with the host CMS, both in core and via add-ons.

But maybe someone, one day, will take your idea and port our software (which is open source and released under GPL) into a stand-alone version that people can enjoy as part of a Linux distro.

Cheers,
Camu

Thanks a lot, Camu, for adding the nifty little feature above already; it works like a charm!

Best!

M.

You’re very welcome!