Stats tracking software

What follows? An analysis of 4 web stats programs. They've been reviewed before, but not by me. If I could do it all over again I would install ShortStat, try it out for a couple months, then take a long hard look at Mint. It doesn't give you that much more.

Google Analytics

This was the first stats program that I pursued. It does a lot of things; some well, but most of them poorly.

The Good: It's free. You don't have to install the viewing environment. Just put a JavaScript <script> tag in the <head> of each of the pages you wish to track.

The Bad: The viewing environment is u.g.l.y. (and slow). It almost exclusively uses Flash. You also can't easily share a view of your page stats with others. There have been no major updates or upgrades since it's public launch under Google. Why isn't this integrated with their 'webmaster' dashboard yet? It doesn't show real time statistics

Shortstat

I dumped GAnalytics for ShortStat, a free PHP based tracking program that is hosted entirely on your site. Shortstat was created by Shaun Inman and is a pre-cursor to Mint. You can view a sample Shortstat installation over at houseonahill.ca.

The Good: It's lightweight, extensible, easily customizable, and all in real time! Ample control is given to the user. It's actually kinda fun just to be able to hack at it to make your own stuff.

The Bad: If you get a lot of traffic your database may become super large, and impede performance. Pages you wish to track must be .php (This ain't really that bad though).

SlimStat

Based on ShortStat, SlimStat is big (free) re-write courtesy of Stephen Wettone. It's not short any more, but it still retains the lightweight feel. A sample installation is viewable atsubletr.com.

The Good: It's being actively developed! The UI is clean. It makes an attempt to give statistics over time, something that Mint and ShortStat fall ... short of.

The Bad: I feel lost in the UI, but not nearly as lost as in GOOG Analytics.

Mint

Shaun's legendary successor to ShortStat. It is the most recent stats program I have installed, and currently it's running behind the scenes on this blog. I am incredibly impressed with it so far. The "Pepper" (read: extensions) are what really bring Mint to life for me. It costs $30.00 US. It was worth it. We'll likely never know the hours that have been invested into this project. If nothing else, it's great just to look at the CSS + JavaScript trickery. This time the sample installation is right here at terrill.ca.

The Good: It's beautiful, and extensible. Similarly to Google Analytics it uses a JavaScript include inside the page header to record hits. Oh, did I mention it has some uber-cool graphs in it too?

The Bad: It's not free, and that might be a barrier to some. The code is growing, and it is more complicated (in my mind) than ShortStat. I think that is one of the reasons why I haven't tried extending it yet.

Know of any others? Leave a recommendation.

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