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 JoomlaWatch is an AJAX component and module for Joomla CMS that allows you to watch your website visitors and bots in real-time from the administration menu. Specially their IP addresses, countries they come from, which pages they are viewing, their browser and operating system, it creates daily and all-time stats from these information plus unique, pageload and total hits statistics. Furthermore, you can block harmful IP addresses and see blocked attempts stats.
(30.11.2008): New features :
- available now in: english, german, dutch, french, slovak, spanish, russian, brazilian
- settings divided into slides using the coda slider
- splitted the jos_joomlawatch_ip2c into two separate tables, so it consumes 42% less database space.
- new ip2country database from http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/downloads/
(new more accurate ip to country resolving)
- disable the backlink to codegravity in the settings
- information about amount of data transferred per session.
- Special thanks to:
(3.10.2008): New features :
- english.php, which you can translate to your own language
- GERMAN translation by Andreas Hofelich - www.andreashofelich.de
- right panel ignore ip fix
- swap visitors/countries
- other smaller improvements and bugfixes
(25.08.2008): VERSION 1.2.7 OFFICIAL - New features :
-complete documentation with references
- username showing next to IP address and in statistics
- recent came from (HTTP referer) in the list of visits
- tooltip with a geographical map
- daily and monthly graphs of a specific value, with daily and weekly increase in percents
- goals (enables you to specify rules) and execute some action
- frontend module that shows numbers of visitors today/yesterday/this week/last week/this month/last month/total
- frontend module that displays the % of visitors by countries
- timezone offset in settings
- ignore list for certain IPs, URI
- better customization with new settings by checkboxes
- reset all stats data button
- customizable map from specific address http://ip2geomap.com?ip={ip}
- added current date and time next to "We have x visitor and y guests online".
- new logo
- and many more new improvements :)
JoomlaWatch Documentation
Accessing JoomlaWatch
To access JoomlaWatch, log in to your Joomla administration. You will see the JoomlaWatch icon in the "Components" menu.
Accessing JoomlaWatch
Stats
You will see the JoomlaWatch main window. This window consists of JoomlaWatch menu (1), Visitors (2), Bots (3), Weekly visits graphs (4), Daily and All-time stats (5).
All of these information are updated in real-time. It means, that you can easily "watch" what's going on currently on your website.
The main window of JoomlaWatch
Latest visitors
In this window you can see the "real users". Stats are updated in intervals specified in the settings. When there is some activity, it is highlighted by the yellow fading rectangle.
In each row you can see:
- A "globe-like" icon. When you point your mouse over this icon, the map is being displayed, where is the actual location of the user. The map comes from the 3rd party service (default by http://www.netip.de)
- Then, there is country code
- Country flag
- IP address of visitor (you can click on this IP and toggle blocing of this user)
- Username (below the ip address)
- Browser icon (when you point your mouse over it, you will get the detailed browser information)
- Operating system icon (when you point your mouse over it, you will get the detailed browser information)
- Access time
- Title of webpage (when you click on this link, the webpage will open)
- URI of webpage (the relative webpage path)
- Came from information (shows how did the actual visitor got to your webpage)
When the user visited more than one page, they are all listed there, with the actual time of the visit (as shown on a screenshot below).
The latest "real" visitors
Map
When you point your mouse cursor over the "globe" icon, that's usualy at the very left. A new window will appear, opening a frame with a website that shows a location of this user on the map.
During the time this window is open, everything behind it stops. This window will disappear, when you click somewhere else, and everything continues as before.
A geographical map showing where the user came from
Bots
The same applies to "bots". Bots are usualy special programs, that access your website for special purpose. Some of them are good (such as google bot that indexes your website content), and some of them are not
(several spambots, that gather e-mail adresses). This differentiation is made by a simple "trick". When someone is a real user, his browser loads the page source (HTML), plus immediately all images.
Bots just load the HTML source, which they usualy parse. You can also see, that these bots usualy don't have any browser identification.
Bots & spiders
Visit stats
This is a real-time updating statistics of your visitors. The heading displays the current week number and year.
The current week is selected by default. There is a simple navigation - you can move backward and forward between weeks.
Then, the table for selected week follows. For each row: on the very left, there is a date, plus the week day shortcut. Then, there are three information.
The first one, displayed in blue color, displays the number of unique visitors for that particular date. The green data mean the pageloads (how many webpages the users have viewed).
The last information (in grey) are hits. These hits are taking also the loads that comes from the bots. In the cell to the very right, there is a graphical representation of these data - as bar charts.
The percentage is a ratio (unique/pageloads). The lower this percentage is, the more pageviews each user on your website makes.
Visit statistics
Daily stats
This part shows the real-time updated statistical information for current day. You can also navigate to previous days.
Each of the stats module shows the name, number of hits, an arrow, trends icon, graphical representation (a bar chart) and percentage.
It contains just top 5 values. You can however see more values, when you click on "Expand" link. It shows 15 more records by default, but this number can be increased in the settings.
At the bottom (Total:), there is a sum of all the data from this statistical part.
- First, there is the URI stats part. It shows the most popular webpages of your website. It's shown as the relative path (the URI [Uniform Resource Identifier])
- Next module is the Countries module. It shows a flag and a country code of your visitors.
- Then, there are the Referers. The top domains, where your users came from
- The IP module show the most active IP adresses on your website. Some IPs are "too active". This can make more load to your website.
When you point your mouse over the 'globe' icon, you can see, where is this IP from. The country flag is also helpful there.
Daily statistics
It's not all..
- Then you can see the most active users. You can also click on the username, and the user detail will be opened.
- Goals are the special feature. It shows the top goal hits. For explanation, please see the Goals section. You can just click the goal name, and the form with that actual goal will be opened, and you can make some modifications to it.
- The next feature is, the Google keywords. You can see the top 5 most used keywords the user have used to get to your website from any google search. For now, just google is supported, maybe there will be some other search interfaces added in the future.
- Next, the top 5 browsers, with icons, and their statistics
- And last, but not least, the icons and names of most popular operating systems used by your visitors
Daily statistics (continued)
All-time stats
When you click on the second tab, right next to the default "Daily" tab, you will see the all-time statistic.
This statistic is made of all available data gathered from the time JoomlaWatch was installed. This is quite the same as the daily stats, except it takes a wider range.
All-time statistics
Frontend
In the frontend, there are the country information, plus information about the unique visits for: Today, Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month and Total. You can hide these information in the Settings, in the "Frontend" section.
JoomlaWatch Frontend showing the top Countries and Visitors information
Settings
In the settings you can alter several parameters concerning appearance, frontend appearance, history & performance, ignoring & blocking and some expert settings.
All of the fields have the explanatory text with an example right next to it.
Appearance & Frontend settings
History & performance, Advanced, and Expert settings
Reset all data
At the very bottom, there is a link that resets all the data. This is good, when you want to start from scratch. Of course, there is a confirmation window to ask you whether you really wish to do that.
Reset all data link, and the confirmation window
Trends
Green & red arrow icon
You could have noticed some new icons next to each 'data' name. First one is the arrow icon.
This icon indicates the increase or decrease or particular data - in our case (on screenshot), the visitors coming from extensions.joomla.org.
This always the last yesterday's value compared to the day before yesterday.
The arrow is green, when there's an increase, and red, when the value has decreased. When there is no change, the little gray dash (-) appears.
The arrow icon and the trend icon
Trend icon
Right next to the arrow, there is a little blue trends icon. When you move your mouse cursor over it, the window appear (as shown on a screenshot below).
"Trends" are in fact, vertical bar charts, that show how your data changed in time.
First graph shows the daily changes, and the next one, the weekly changes. Below each bar, there is a percentage, indicating the increase or decrease from the previous day.
The same is on the weekly basis. These data are available everywhere, where there is a trend icon. It applies to all kind of data - URI, referers, keywords, countries, and even goals.
Trends (daily and weekly charts) for country: us
IP Blocking
You can block IP address, just by clicking on it. The confirmation is needed. When the IP is blocked, it's indicated by a strike-out.
Blocked IP, plus the confirmation window
IP Unblocking
To unblock the IP, you can click on blocked IP again. If this IP already disappeared from the visitors windows, you can still find it at the bottom of the stats window (as shown on a screenshot below).
There you can directly see the number of blocked attempts for each IP. Click "unblock" to unblock it. You can also enter the IP manually, by clicking the "Enter the IP manually".
There, you can use wildcards as well. Eg. 217.* will block all IP starting with 217.
List of blocked IPs, plus a window to enter a new IP manually
Goals
Goals.. Goals are quite handy feature when you want to get some more advanced information. "Goals allow you to specify special parameters. When these parameters match, the goal counter is increased. This way you can monitor whether the user has visited a specific URL, posted a specific value, has a specific username or came from a specific address. You can also block or redirect such users to some other URL.".
On a screenshot below, you can see a table with several goals, their parameters, how many times the goal has been reached, and the action image buttons to enable/disable a goal, edit, and delete a goal.
To create a new goal, click the icon with caption "New goal".
The main goals table
New goal
You will get the blank form. This topic is quite advanced, and might appear quite complex, but actualy isn't.
Every field contains a long description, so it should be quite easy to figure out what to put there.
When you don't fill anything in, the condition is ignored. It means, that the more fields are filled, the more likely is this goal going to be reached.
The best would be to make an example: Let's assume, we want to protect our website from some spambots
Creating a new goal
Goal example - protecting our Order form
Let's assume now, that some bad guys posted a message about your website, on let's say: "badforum.org". The message states,
that some of them has discovered, that you have a form on your website, and there is a possibility to flood this form with thousands of messages.
This form represents an order form, and everytime someone submits the form, you receive a text-message about the new order.
Your order form has an address: www.yoursite.com/order-form .
However, this time someone wants to abuse it.
Your order form is inacessible without registration, so they registered a user: botuser1.
You have discovered, that they use special server somewhere in, let's say, Malaysia, for this purposes.
The IP of their servers is 201.2.3.2, 201.2.3.3, 201.2.4.4.. This program they have made fills the order message about how fantastic the game "World of Warcraft" is, with tons of links to some inappropriate websites they own.
So, with JoomlaWatch, you can do something against it, or agains some other attempts like this. Let's look at the filled form below:
The first field contains the name of our goal, it can be anything. Then, there is the URI condition, that we are just checking whether they are trying to access a webpage with our form.
Title condition is effective, when you want to protect several websites with some keyword in it.
Then, their the username follows. Then, there is their IP address range, which covers all addresses mentioned above, just with one wildcard (*).
Your form, when submitted, calls /order-form?form_action=submit_form. When you specify this, it will cover only the cases, when the form has been submitted.
And.. when we look at the order form on our website, the field with named "order_message". (It's in the HTML source <texarea name='order_message'></texarea>)
Finally.. we specify, where we want such bad guy to be redirected. In our case, it's some general server, or, if we do not want to forward him anywhere, we can just "block" him, and set the "Block" field to 1.
Example: A goal to protect the order form
Some information related to previous versions follow
(18.05.2008): VERSION 1.2.6 - top referers: now you can see the daily and all time statistics where the most visitors come from  Top domains refering to your website (24.03.2008): VERSION 1.2.5 - should fix errors of 1.2.4 like "blank page" and define notices
- all the features from 1.2.4
(16.03.2008): VERSION 1.2.4
Version 1.2.4 had some problems with installation and many people reported a "blank page". The bad thing is, that for me it works well. But was unable to figure out what was causing the problems for so many users. New features in this version:
- Was rewritten to work with both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 (NOW NATIVE)!
- IP statistics - can help you to identify spambots or users that make most requests
- IP blocking feature: blocking of single IPs or using wildcard filter
- A counter of blocked attempts for particular blocked IP
- Introduced some new config parameters
- Parameters now fully configurable in UI in back-end.
- Flags show the whole country name in mouseOver
- and many more fixes and improvements (17.03.2008): VERSION 1.2.4
- I got some complains like "Why do I have to enable the legacy mode, when it should work with Joomla 1.5", or "the Legacy mode sux..", and so on..
- the thing was, that the you had to enable the legacy mode just because of a fact that two different versions of joomla use different XML descriptors (joomlawatch.xml in com_joomlawatch.zip)
- finally, I found a "trick", I did not know about before. You can have 2 descriptors in one .zip archive - (joomla.xml and joomla.j15.xml). Pitty that I did not know that before.
- but now it's fixed and it runs on 1.5 and 1.0 natively !
- so just please re-download and re-install from this day.
Things you shouldn't forget:
- When upgrading to a new version, all tables are being deleted, so if you want to keep the stats, make a database backup
- Before installation, please make sure you have at least 20 MB of free space.
- Don't forget to unzip the whole archive and then just use those .zip files for installation.
- Now you don't have to enable the legacy mode in Joomla 1.5
- You MUST publish the mod_joomlawatch module, to see users on your website.
- make sure you did all of this, before you ask for help in forum or in comments.
Thank you
Possible problems with registration
Some users reported that when they wanted to register, the system has blocked their account.
It's probably because you have to click the link recieved by an email to activate it.
When you don't revieve this email, your domain is probably blacklisted, so try to use another email.
If this still doesn't work, please write me a short email and I'll enable your account manually. Thank you. JoomlaWatch Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) When I open the JoomlaWatch back-end, I just see "Loading visits...", "Loading stats.." This is because the files in the folder /components/com_joomlawatch/ have the wrong permissions. Please change the permissions to this whole foder to 755. (Make them visible to everyone). To do this, you can use the Total commander Files->Change attributes, or the unix command: chmod 755 "folder".
I cannot see the JoomlaWatch icon When you see an icon of a "broken image" instead, click it and choose "View image". You'll probably see a message: 500 Internal server error. I cannot do anything about this error, cause it's something wrong with your server's configuration. You can try to set the permissions to the files and folters of JoomlaWatch to 755, and if this wouldn't help, please contact your system administrator and ask him, why it doesn't work. Who are the "bots" appearing in the statistics? Bots and spiders are special programs run by individuals or companies that visit your website for some purpose. Some of them are "friendly", like googlebot that tries to index the content of your website, and some of them are not.Like the ones, that extract email adresses to send spam to. There are some other spambots, that are filling forms and this way are trying to "promote" some websites. That's why most of the forms use the CAPTCHA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha) mechanisms. Some of those bots can make many requests to your website, and make it load slower or very occasionally they may cause a server crash (Distributed Denial of Service Attack from many IP adresses).
How is it determined who is a "bot"? The principle of JoomlaWatch's differentiation of bots and visitors is simple.. Real visitors when having a normal browser usualy load the images, including the joomlawatch icon. The others are just interested in th HTML source without loading additional images, whsere they can find some email addresses or some other valuable information.
It's like I would make a program, that opens the address, parses it, and then sends some emails to the email addresses that it has found.
Of course, there are "friendly" bots as well, like the googlebot, that takes care of indexing your website for the google search, or some other. Without these, you won't see your page in search results. I cannot open the .zip archive Sometimes it happens, that when you are downloading a file from the internet, the HTTP connection is timed out. It means, that the download seems to be completed, but only 80% of it is really downloaded. If this happens, try to re-download it again, until you open it succesfully. It's recommended to use some download manager as wget, FlashGet or Mass downloader. The component installation ends with "Cannot find the XML setup..." Free some of your webhosting space. The installation of JoomlaWatch requires at least 20MB. It's because it contains huge ip to location resolving tables. AJAX permission Denied This usualy happens whey you have forgotten the "www." in front of your domain name. It makes the JavaScript think you are trying to access the different domain, and it's restricted because of the security reasons. So, please just try to access your site administration with the domain name that's specified as a "live site" in your configuration.php. (Usualy the domain with the www in in "http://www.yourdomain.com") Why do I see the ads in the JoomlaWatch backend? This is the only way how to keep the component free. Developing the new features costs a lot of time and effort. I hope these ads are not that much intrusive that it would annoy that much people, than paying some money for a single download. If you don't like the ads, please use the version 1.2.5, that comes without them, but with the older features as well. Do you like JoomlaWatch? Please support it at extensions.joomla.org and submit your vote. Thank you :-P  See the most active IP addresses. This way you can determine eg. spambots trying to harm your website.  Now everything is configured without editing configuration files with user-friendly interface  You can block several IP addresses manually  All IP you blocked are in a list with number of blocked attempts.  Click to see the flash demo of JoomlaWatch stats
REQUIREMENTS:- Apache web server
- PHP 4 or 5 (Tested on 5.2.5)
- MySQL >= 5.0 (Tested on 5.0.51)
- Joomla 1.0.x INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS for Joomla 1.0.x Click to see the installation howto (same as the steps below)
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS for Joomla 1.5.xFrom v1.2.4 you don't need to enable "Legacy mode" Plug-in.
Proceed like with installation for 1.0 To install the JoomlaWatch,
!!! first make sure you have enough space on your hosting, approximately 20 MB of free space !!! Component installation for Joomla
1. log into the joomla administration
2. Choose Installers->Components
3. Click "Browse..."
4. Choose the com_joomlawatch.zip you downloaded
5. Click "Upload File & Install"
6. You should see the Installation procedure and the "Installation finished". Module installation for Joomla
This module shows a little monitoring icon with JoomlaWatch logo on your website.
This way you can identify a browser of your visitor or whether it's a bot.
Without this icon there won't be any user-Agent information available.
1. Choose Installers->Modules
2. Click "Browse..."
3. Choose the mod_joomlawatch.zip you downloaded
4. Click "Upload File & Install"
5. Choose Modules->Site modules
6. Find JoomlaWatch and click the "X" icon to make it switch from unpublished to published
7. Click the JoomlaWatch link, and choose where this module would appear.
The default are right, left, bottom.. but make sure this position appears in your template.
It's also recommended to switch the "Show title" to No.
Pages/Items -> MenuItem Link(s) has to be "All".
8. Click the "Save" icon and check whether your site shows the joomlawatch icon. That's it ! CONFIGURATION OPTIONSYou can change some parameters of JoomlaWatch editing the /components/com_joomlawatch/config.php file. /* This is the main file with basic settings */
define('JOOMLAWATCH_VERSION', "1.2.0");
define('JOOMLAWATCH_UPDATE_TIME_VISITS', "2000"); // time in miliseconds, default is 2000, be careful with this
define('JOOMLAWATCH_UPDATE_TIME_STATS', "4000"); // time in miliseconds, default is 4000, be careful with this
define('JOOMLAWATCH_MAXID_BOTS',10); // how many bot visits keep in database
define('JOOMLAWATCH_MAXID_VISITORS',60); // how many real visits keep in database
define('JOOMLAWATCH_TRUNCATE_VISITS',40); // maximum characters to be shown in long titles and uris
define('JOOMLAWATCH_TRUNCATE_STATS',20); // maximum characters to be shown in right statistics panel
define('JOOMLAWATCH_STATS_KEEP_DAYS',9); // days to keep statistics, 0 = infinite
UPDATE INSTRUCIONS 1. Re-download the latest archive from the download section of this website 2. Unzip the archive with joomla component and module into some temporary folder ( the archive contains com_joomlawatch.zip, mod_joomlawatch.zip and some text files) 3. Uninstall the old JoomlaWatch module
Choose Installers -> Modules from the main menu
choose mod_joomlawatch
click "Uninstall icon" in the upper right corner 4. Install the new JoomlaWatch module
Click "Browse",
choose a mod_joomlawatch.zip from your temporary folder,
Click "Upload file & Install"
5. Uninstall the old JoomlaWatch component
Choose Installers->Components from the main menu
choose JoomlaWatch
click "Uninstall icon" in the upper right corner 6. Install the new JoomlaWatch component
Click "Browse",
choose a com_joomlawatch.zip from your temporary folder,
Click "Upload file & Install" 7. Publish the JoomlaWatch module:
Choose Modules->Site modules from the main menu
Find JoomlaWatch and click the "X" icon to make it switch from unpublished to published
Click the JoomlaWatch link, and choose where this module would appear.
The default are right, left, bottom.. but make sure this position appears in your template.
It's also recommended to switch the "Show title" to No.
Pages/Items -> MenuItem Link(s) has to be "All".
Click the "Save" icon and check whether your site shows the joomlawatch icon.
Reporting possible problems of this Joomla stats componentEven though most of the bugs are fixed in the latest update, the range of browsers, web servers and their different implementation is very wide, so it's impossible to reproduce the runtime enviroment of every user - you. Before reporting any possible problem, please read the Forum of this website, whether the solution isn't there.
If not, please try to include as much information as you can (Browser type and version, PHP version, OS, and the problem why it didn't work). Not just "it doesn't work for me". This kind of report doesn't help anyone. Thank you.
OLDER RELEASES: UPDATE (27.01.2008)
- added more configurable options into config.php
- JOOMLAWATCH_BLANK_ICON to use the blank icon
- date and week offsets
- JOOMLAWATCH_SERVER_URI_KEY option for cases that it logged only index.php.
Now, there is an option to use your own $_SERVER key To upgrade to the new version, please just re-download and re-install. VERSION 1.2.0Changes and improvements:
- improved security
- now showing real visitors and bots separately
- added right panel with live statistic information:
- graph showing weekly unique visitors, page loads and total hits
- smaller expandable charts showing daily and all-time count and
percentage of popular pages, countries, browsers and operating systems
- more configurable parameters
- performance improvements using database indices and optimized queries
- everything made by AJAX request and partial page updates so you don't
have to wait for the whole page refresh
UPDATE (03.12.2007): Some improvements - version 1.0.3
- discovered a bug, some PHP configuration are just set to interpret <?php and ignore <? , fixed
- config.php with the update interval configuraiton
- country code right next to the country flag (for those who don't know country flags)
- JoomlaWatch icon now looks better on a dark background
- some minor issues fixed (thanks to Wayne Wenquiang)
- notice about the latest version in the installation
- versioning UPDATE (22.11.2007): Automatic Refresh in IE
Some users reported that the administration part did not refresh automatically. I found out that this problem occured only in Internet Explorer. The problem was, that IE did not recognized the http.responseText[i] javascript command, so I replaced it with http.responseText.charAt(i) and succesfully tested it with Internet explorer, firefox and Joomla 1.0.13. Sorry for any inconvenience UPDATE (15.11.2007): Notices Some people reported, that the JoomlaWatch icon was not properly shown, and therefore JoomlaWatch did not work. It was mainly because they had the PHP NOTICES enabled on server by default. This caused the coruption of the gif icon adding PHP text output to icon's binary data. In this fix I suppressed the notices by adding the @ in front of several PHP expressions and corrected some PHP's complains.
JoomlaWatch component after installation in the Joomla Administration
 A country flag, IP address, browser and OS identification, title and url of the webpage 
Click to see the flash demo of JoomlaWatch stats
 Stats layout in Joomla administration
JoomlaWatch is an AJAX component and module for Joomla CMS that allows you to watch your website visitors and bots in real-time from the administration menu. Specially their IP addresses, countries they come from, which pages they are viewing, their browser and operating system, it creates daily and all-time stats from these information plus unique, pageload and total hits statistics. Furthermore, you can block harmful IP addresses and see blocked attempts stats.
(25.08.2008): VERSION 1.2.7 NEW* official - New features :
-complete documentation with references
- username showing next to IP address and in statistics
- recent came from (HTTP referer) in the list of visits
- tooltip with a geographical map
- daily and monthly graphs of a specific value, with daily and weekly increase in percents
- goals (enables you to specify rules) and execute some action
- frontend module that shows numbers of visitors today/yesterday/this week/last week/this month/last month/total
- frontend module that displays the % of visitors by countries
- timezone offset in settings
- ignore list for certain IPs, URI
- better customization with new settings by checkboxes
- reset all stats data button
- customizable map from specific address http://ip2geomap.com?ip={ip}
- added current date and time next to "We have x visitor and y guests online".
- new logo
- and many more new improvements :)
JoomlaWatch Documentation
Accessing JoomlaWatch
To access JoomlaWatch, log in to your Joomla administration. You will see the JoomlaWatch icon in the "Components" menu.
Accessing JoomlaWatch
Stats
You will see the JoomlaWatch main window. This window consists of JoomlaWatch menu (1), Visitors (2), Bots (3), Weekly visits graphs (4), Daily and All-time stats (5).
All of these information are updated in real-time. It means, that you can easily "watch" what's going on currently on your website.
The main window of JoomlaWatch
Latest visitors
In this window you can see the "real users". Stats are updated in intervals specified in the settings. When there is some activity, it is highlighted by the yellow fading rectangle.
In each row you can see:
- A "globe-like" icon. When you point your mouse over this icon, the map is being displayed, where is the actual location of the user. The map comes from the 3rd party service (default by http://www.netip.de)
- Then, there is country code
- Country flag
- IP address of visitor (you can click on this IP and toggle blocing of this user)
- Username (below the ip address)
- Browser icon (when you point your mouse over it, you will get the detailed browser information)
- Operating system icon (when you point your mouse over it, you will get the detailed browser information)
- Access time
- Title of webpage (when you click on this link, the webpage will open)
- URI of webpage (the relative webpage path)
- Came from information (shows how did the actual visitor got to your webpage)
When the user visited more than one page, they are all listed there, with the actual time of the visit (as shown on a screenshot below).
The latest "real" visitors
Map
When you point your mouse cursor over the "globe" icon, that's usualy at the very left. A new window will appear, opening a frame with a website that shows a location of this user on the map.
During the time this window is open, everything behind it stops. This window will disappear, when you click somewhere else, and everything continues as before.
A geographical map showing where the user came from
Bots
The same applies to "bots". Bots are usualy special programs, that access your website for special purpose. Some of them are good (such as google bot that indexes your website content), and some of them are not
(several spambots, that gather e-mail adresses). This differentiation is made by a simple "trick". When someone is a real user, his browser loads the page source (HTML), plus immediately all images.
Bots just load the HTML source, which they usualy parse. You can also see, that these bots usualy don't have any browser identification.
Bots & spiders
Visit stats
This is a real-time updating statistics of your visitors. The heading displays the current week number and year.
The current week is selected by default. There is a simple navigation - you can move backward and forward between weeks.
Then, the table for selected week follows. For each row: on the very left, there is a date, plus the week day shortcut. Then, there are three information.
The first one, displayed in blue color, displays the number of unique visitors for that particular date. The green data mean the pageloads (how many webpages the users have viewed).
The last information (in grey) are hits. These hits are taking also the loads that comes from the bots. In the cell to the very right, there is a graphical representation of these data - as bar charts.
The percentage is a ratio (unique/pageloads). The lower this percentage is, the more pageviews each user on your website makes.
Visit statistics
Daily stats
This part shows the real-time updated statistical information for current day. You can also navigate to previous days.
Each of the stats module shows the name, number of hits, an arrow, trends icon, graphical representation (a bar chart) and percentage.
It contains just top 5 values. You can however see more values, when you click on "Expand" link. It shows 15 more records by default, but this number can be increased in the settings.
At the bottom (Total:), there is a sum of all the data from this statistical part.
- First, there is the URI stats part. It shows the most popular webpages of your website. It's shown as the relative path (the URI [Uniform Resource Identifier])
- Next module is the Countries module. It shows a flag and a country code of your visitors.
- Then, there are the Referers. The top domains, where your users came from
- The IP module show the most active IP adresses on your website. Some IPs are "too active". This can make more load to your website.
When you point your mouse over the 'globe' icon, you can see, where is this IP from. The country flag is also helpful there.
Daily statistics
It's not all..
- Then you can see the most active users. You can also click on the username, and the user detail will be opened.
- Goals are the special feature. It shows the top goal hits. For explanation, please see the Goals section. You can just click the goal name, and the form with that actual goal will be opened, and you can make some modifications to it.
- The next feature is, the Google keywords. You can see the top 5 most used keywords the user have used to get to your website from any google search. For now, just google is supported, maybe there will be some other search interfaces added in the future.
- Next, the top 5 browsers, with icons, and their statistics
- And last, but not least, the icons and names of most popular operating systems used by your visitors
Daily statistics (continued)
All-time stats
When you click on the second tab, right next to the default "Daily" tab, you will see the all-time statistic.
This statistic is made of all available data gathered from the time JoomlaWatch was installed. This is quite the same as the daily stats, except it takes a wider range.
All-time statistics
Frontend
In the frontend, there are the country information, plus information about the unique visits for: Today, Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month and Total. You can hide these information in the Settings, in the "Frontend" section.
JoomlaWatch Frontend showing the top Countries and Visitors information
Settings
In the settings you can alter several parameters concerning appearance, frontend appearance, history & performance, ignoring & blocking and some expert settings.
All of the fields have the explanatory text with an example right next to it.
Appearance & Frontend settings
History & performance, Advanced, and Expert settings
Reset all data
At the very bottom, there is a link that resets all the data. This is good, when you want to start from scratch. Of course, there is a confirmation window to ask you whether you really wish to do that.
Reset all data link, and the confirmation window
Trends
Green & red arrow icon
You could have noticed some new icons next to each 'data' name. First one is the arrow icon.
This icon indicates the increase or decrease or particular data - in our case (on screenshot), the visitors coming from extensions.joomla.org.
This always the last yesterday's value compared to the day before yesterday.
The arrow is green, when there's an increase, and red, when the value has decreased. When there is no change, the little gray dash (-) appears.
The arrow icon and the trend icon
Trend icon
Right next to the arrow, there is a little blue trends icon. When you move your mouse cursor over it, the window appear (as shown on a screenshot below).
"Trends" are in fact, vertical bar charts, that show how your data changed in time.
First graph shows the daily changes, and the next one, the weekly changes. Below each bar, there is a percentage, indicating the increase or decrease from the previous day.
The same is on the weekly basis. These data are available everywhere, where there is a trend icon. It applies to all kind of data - URI, referers, keywords, countries, and even goals.
Trends (daily and weekly charts) for country: us
IP Blocking
You can block IP address, just by clicking on it. The confirmation is needed. When the IP is blocked, it's indicated by a strike-out.
Blocked IP, plus the confirmation window
IP Unblocking
To unblock the IP, you can click on blocked IP again. If this IP already disappeared from the visitors windows, you can still find it at the bottom of the stats window (as shown on a screenshot below).
There you can directly see the number of blocked attempts for each IP. Click "unblock" to unblock it. You can also enter the IP manually, by clicking the "Enter the IP manually".
There, you can use wildcards as well. Eg. 217.* will block all IP starting with 217.
List of blocked IPs, plus a window to enter a new IP manually
Goals
Goals.. Goals are quite handy feature when you want to get some more advanced information. "Goals allow you to specify special parameters. When these parameters match, the goal counter is increased. This way you can monitor whether the user has visited a specific URL, posted a specific value, has a specific username or came from a specific address. You can also block or redirect such users to some other URL.".
On a screenshot below, you can see a table with several goals, their parameters, how many times the goal has been reached, and the action image buttons to enable/disable a goal, edit, and delete a goal.
To create a new goal, click the icon with caption "New goal".
The main goals table
New goal
You will get the blank form. This topic is quite advanced, and might appear quite complex, but actualy isn't.
Every field contains a long description, so it should be quite easy to figure out what to put there.
When you don't fill anything in, the condition is ignored. It means, that the more fields are filled, the more likely is this goal going to be reached.
The best would be to make an example: Let's assume, we want to protect our website from some spambots
Creating a new goal
Goal example - protecting our Order form
Let's assume now, that some bad guys posted a message about your website, on let's say: "badforum.org". The message states,
that some of them has discovered, that you have a form on your website, and there is a possibility to flood this form with thousands of messages.
This form represents an order form, and everytime someone submits the form, you receive a text-message about the new order.
Your order form has an address: www.yoursite.com/order-form .
However, this time someone wants to abuse it.
Your order form is inacessible without registration, so they registered a user: botuser1.
You have discovered, that they use special server somewhere in, let's say, Malaysia, for this purposes.
The IP of their servers is 201.2.3.2, 201.2.3.3, 201.2.4.4.. This program they have made fills the order message about how fantastic the game "World of Warcraft" is, with tons of links to some inappropriate websites they own.
So, with JoomlaWatch, you can do something against it, or agains some other attempts like this. Let's look at the filled form below:
The first field contains the name of our goal, it can be anything. Then, there is the URI condition, that we are just checking whether they are trying to access a webpage with our form.
Title condition is effective, when you want to protect several websites with some keyword in it.
Then, their the username follows. Then, there is their IP address range, which covers all addresses mentioned above, just with one wildcard (*).
Your form, when submitted, calls /order-form?form_action=submit_form. When you specify this, it will cover only the cases, when the form has been submitted.
And.. when we look at the order form on our website, the field with named "order_message". (It's in the HTML source <texarea name='order_message'></texarea>)
Finally.. we specify, where we want such bad guy to be redirected. In our case, it's some general server, or, if we do not want to forward him anywhere, we can just "block" him, and set the "Block" field to 1.
Example: A goal to protect the order form
Some information related to previous versions follow
(18.05.2008): VERSION 1.2.6 - top referers: now you can see the daily and all time statistics where the most visitors come from Top domains refering to your website (24.03.2008): VERSION 1.2.5 - should fix errors of 1.2.4 like "blank page" and define notices
- all the features from 1.2.4
(16.03.2008): VERSION 1.2.4
Version 1.2.4 had some problems with installation and many people reported a "blank page". The bad thing is, that for me it works well. But was unable to figure out what was causing the problems for so many users. New features in this version:
- Was rewritten to work with both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 (NOW NATIVE)!
- IP statistics - can help you to identify spambots or users that make most requests
- IP blocking feature: blocking of single IPs or using wildcard filter
- A counter of blocked attempts for particular blocked IP
- Introduced some new config parameters
- Parameters now fully configurable in UI in back-end.
- Flags show the whole country name in mouseOver
- and many more fixes and improvements (17.03.2008): VERSION 1.2.4
- I got some complains like "Why do I have to enable the legacy mode, when it should work with Joomla 1.5", or "the Legacy mode sux..", and so on..
- the thing was, that the you had to enable the legacy mode just because of a fact that two different versions of joomla use different XML descriptors (joomlawatch.xml in com_joomlawatch.zip)
- finally, I found a "trick", I did not know about before. You can have 2 descriptors in one .zip archive - (joomla.xml and joomla.j15.xml). Pitty that I did not know that before.
- but now it's fixed and it runs on 1.5 and 1.0 natively !
- so just please re-download and re-install from this day. Please make sure you have the .zip archive downloaded from this website rather than other Joomla community websites that copied the very first archive published. This way you'll have the latest version with fixed minor bugs like the fix for the older version of MySQL. Thank you.
Latest version: 1.2.5 File-size: 895,988 bytes From: 24.03.2008
Things you shouldn't forget:
- When upgrading to a new version, all tables are being deleted, so if you want to keep the stats, make a database backup
- Before installation, please make sure you have at least 20 MB of free space.
- Don't forget to unzip the whole archive and then just use those .zip files for installation.
- Now you don't have to enable the legacy mode in Joomla 1.5
- You MUST publish the mod_joomlawatch module, to see users on your website.
- make sure you did all of this, before you ask for help in forum or in comments.
Thank you
Possible problems with registration
Some users reported that when they wanted to register, the system has blocked their account.
It's probably because you have to click the link recieved by an email to activate it.
When you don't revieve this email, your domain is probably blacklisted, so try to use another email.
If this still doesn't work, please write me a short email and I'll enable your account manually. Thank you. JoomlaWatch Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) When I open the JoomlaWatch back-end, I just see "Loading visits...", "Loading stats.." This is because the files in the folder /components/com_joomlawatch/ have the wrong permissions. Please change the permissions to this whole foder to 755. (Make them visible to everyone). To do this, you can use the Total commander Files->Change attributes, or the unix command: chmod 755 "folder".
I cannot see the JoomlaWatch icon When you see an icon of a "broken image" instead, click it and choose "View image". You'll probably see a message: 500 Internal server error. I cannot do anything about this error, cause it's something wrong with your server's configuration. You can try to set the permissions to the files and folters of JoomlaWatch to 755, and if this wouldn't help, please contact your system administrator and ask him, why it doesn't work. Who are the "bots" appearing in the statistics? Bots and spiders are special programs run by individuals or companies that visit your website for some purpose. Some of them are "friendly", like googlebot that tries to index the content of your website, and some of them are not.Like the ones, that extract email adresses to send spam to. There are some other spambots, that are filling forms and this way are trying to "promote" some websites. That's why most of the forms use the CAPTCHA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha) mechanisms. Some of those bots can make many requests to your website, and make it load slower or very occasionally they may cause a server crash (Distributed Denial of Service Attack from many IP adresses).
How is it determined who is a "bot"? The principle of JoomlaWatch's differentiation of bots and visitors is simple.. Real visitors when having a normal browser usualy load the images, including the joomlawatch icon. The others are just interested in th HTML source without loading additional images, whsere they can find some email addresses or some other valuable information.
It's like I would make a program, that opens the address, parses it, and then sends some emails to the email addresses that it has found.
Of course, there are "friendly" bots as well, like the googlebot, that takes care of indexing your website for the google search, or some other. Without these, you won't see your page in search results. I cannot open the .zip archive Sometimes it happens, that when you are downloading a file from the internet, the HTTP connection is timed out. It means, that the download seems to be completed, but only 80% of it is really downloaded. If this happens, try to re-download it again, until you open it succesfully. It's recommended to use some download manager as wget, FlashGet or Mass downloader. The component installation ends with "Cannot find the XML setup..." Free some of your webhosting space. The installation of JoomlaWatch requires at least 20MB. It's because it contains huge ip to location resolving tables. AJAX permission Denied This usualy happens whey you have forgotten the "www." in front of your domain name. It makes the JavaScript think you are trying to access the different domain, and it's restricted because of the security reasons. So, please just try to access your site administration with the domain name that's specified as a "live site" in your configuration.php. (Usualy the domain with the www in in "http://www.yourdomain.com") Why do I see the ads in the JoomlaWatch backend? This is the only way how to keep the component free. Developing the new features costs a lot of time and effort. I hope these ads are not that much intrusive that it would annoy that much people, than paying some money for a single download. If you don't like the ads, please use the version 1.2.5, that comes without them, but with the older features as well. Do you like JoomlaWatch? Please support it at extensions.joomla.org and submit your vote. Thank you :-P See the most active IP addresses. This way you can determine eg. spambots trying to harm your website. Now everything is configured without editing configuration files with user-friendly interface You can block several IP addresses manually All IP you blocked are in a list with number of blocked attempts. Click to see the flash demo of JoomlaWatch stats
REQUIREMENTS:- Apache web server
- PHP 4 or 5 (Tested on 5.2.5)
- MySQL >= 5.0 (Tested on 5.0.51)
- Joomla 1.0.x INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS for Joomla 1.0.x Click to see the installation howto (same as the steps below)
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS for Joomla 1.5.xFrom v1.2.4 you don't need to enable "Legacy mode" Plug-in.
Proceed like with installation for 1.0 To install the JoomlaWatch,
!!! first make sure you have enough space on your hosting, approximately 20 MB of free space !!! Component installation for Joomla
1. log into the joomla administration
2. Choose Installers->Components
3. Click "Browse..."
4. Choose the com_joomlawatch.zip you downloaded
5. Click "Upload File & Install"
6. You should see the Installation procedure and the "Installation finished". Module installation for Joomla
This module shows a little monitoring icon with JoomlaWatch logo on your website.
This way you can identify a browser of your visitor or whether it's a bot.
Without this icon there won't be any user-Agent information available.
1. Choose Installers->Modules
2. Click "Browse..."
3. Choose the mod_joomlawatch.zip you downloaded
4. Click "Upload File & Install"
5. Choose Modules->Site modules
6. Find JoomlaWatch and click the "X" icon to make it switch from unpublished to published
7. Click the JoomlaWatch link, and choose where this module would appear.
The default are right, left, bottom.. but make sure this position appears in your template.
It's also recommended to switch the "Show title" to No.
Pages/Items -> MenuItem Link(s) has to be "All".
8. Click the "Save" icon and check whether your site shows the joomlawatch icon. That's it ! CONFIGURATION OPTIONSYou can change some parameters of JoomlaWatch editing the /components/com_joomlawatch/config.php file. /* This is the main file with basic settings */
define('JOOMLAWATCH_VERSION', "1.2.0");
define('JOOMLAWATCH_UPDATE_TIME_VISITS', "2000"); // time in miliseconds, default is 2000, be careful with this
define('JOOMLAWATCH_UPDATE_TIME_STATS', "4000"); // time in miliseconds, default is 4000, be careful with this
define('JOOMLAWATCH_MAXID_BOTS',10); // how many bot visits keep in database
define('JOOMLAWATCH_MAXID_VISITORS',60); // how many real visits keep in database
define('JOOMLAWATCH_TRUNCATE_VISITS',40); // maximum characters to be shown in long titles and uris
define('JOOMLAWATCH_TRUNCATE_STATS',20); // maximum characters to be shown in right statistics panel
define('JOOMLAWATCH_STATS_KEEP_DAYS',9); // days to keep statistics, 0 = infinite
UPDATE INSTRUCIONS 1. Re-download the latest archive from the download section of this website 2. Unzip the archive with joomla component and module into some temporary folder ( the archive contains com_joomlawatch.zip, mod_joomlawatch.zip and some text files) 3. Uninstall the old JoomlaWatch module
Choose Installers -> Modules from the main menu
choose mod_joomlawatch
click "Uninstall icon" in the upper right corner 4. Install the new JoomlaWatch module
Click "Browse",
choose a mod_joomlawatch.zip from your temporary folder,
Click "Upload file & Install"
5. Uninstall the old JoomlaWatch component
Choose Installers->Components from the main menu
choose JoomlaWatch
click "Uninstall icon" in the upper right corner 6. Install the new JoomlaWatch component
Click "Browse",
choose a com_joomlawatch.zip from your temporary folder,
Click "Upload file & Install" 7. Publish the JoomlaWatch module:
Choose Modules->Site modules from the main menu
Find JoomlaWatch and click the "X" icon to make it switch from unpublished to published
Click the JoomlaWatch link, and choose where this module would appear.
The default are right, left, bottom.. but make sure this position appears in your template.
It's also recommended to switch the "Show title" to No.
Pages/Items -> MenuItem Link(s) has to be "All".
Click the "Save" icon and check whether your site shows the joomlawatch icon.
Reporting possible problems of this Joomla stats componentEven though most of the bugs are fixed in the latest update, the range of browsers, web servers and their different implementation is very wide, so it's impossible to reproduce the runtime enviroment of every user - you. Before reporting any possible problem, please read the Forum of this website, whether the solution isn't there.
If not, please try to include as much information as you can (Browser type and version, PHP version, OS, and the problem why it didn't work). Not just "it doesn't work for me". This kind of report doesn't help anyone. Thank you.
OLDER RELEASES: UPDATE (27.01.2008)
- added more configurable options into config.php
- JOOMLAWATCH_BLANK_ICON to use the blank icon
- date and week offsets
- JOOMLAWATCH_SERVER_URI_KEY option for cases that it logged only index.php.
Now, there is an option to use your own $_SERVER key To upgrade to the new version, please just re-download and re-install. VERSION 1.2.0Changes and improvements:
- improved security
- now showing real visitors and bots separately
- added right panel with live statistic information:
- graph showing weekly unique visitors, page loads and total hits
- smaller expandable charts showing daily and all-time count and
percentage of popular pages, countries, browsers and operating systems
- more configurable parameters
- performance improvements using database indices and optimized queries
- everything made by AJAX request and partial page updates so you don't
have to wait for the whole page refresh
UPDATE (03.12.2007): Some improvements - version 1.0.3
- discovered a bug, some PHP configuration are just set to interpret <?php and ignore <? , fixed
- config.php with the update interval configuraiton
- country code right next to the country flag (for those who don't know country flags)
- JoomlaWatch icon now looks better on a dark background
- some minor issues fixed (thanks to Wayne Wenquiang)
- notice about the latest version in the installation
- versioning UPDATE (22.11.2007): Automatic Refresh in IE
Some users reported that the administration part did not refresh automatically. I found out that this problem occured only in Internet Explorer. The problem was, that IE did not recognized the http.responseText[i] javascript command, so I replaced it with http.responseText.charAt(i) and succesfully tested it with Internet explorer, firefox and Joomla 1.0.13. Sorry for any inconvenience UPDATE (15.11.2007): Notices Some people reported, that the JoomlaWatch icon was not properly shown, and therefore JoomlaWatch did not work. It was mainly because they had the PHP NOTICES enabled on server by default. This caused the coruption of the gif icon adding PHP text output to icon's binary data. In this fix I suppressed the notices by adding the @ in front of several PHP expressions and corrected some PHP's complains.
JoomlaWatch component after installation in the Joomla Administration
A country flag, IP address, browser and OS identification, title and url of the webpage
Click to see the flash demo of JoomlaWatch stats
Stats layout in Joomla administration
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