j4age
Version
4.0.2.6 (Beta) (last update on Sep 3, 2012)
Rating
Compatibility
Reviews
104
License
GPLv2 or later
Non-Commercial
Type
Date Added
21 March 2010
Technical Requirements
- PHP 5.x and above
- MySQL 4.x and above
- Joomla 1.5 & Joomla 1.6 native support
Restricted support for PHP 4.x and MySQL 3.x for the core component, but no guarantee for the migration/update process. This module is only handling IPv4 networks and not officially IPv6!
Few things you should know
- After installation, you have to run a Post-Installation process. That´s not because we want it that way, it´s more about getting control about issues with huge databases.
- Do not assign the j4age component to a menu item even if a link is shown up in your admin page for selection. The component itself has no public front-end part and you will see only a error message!!
Issues?
- Most people install the activation module, but do not enable it or do assign it to a location, which is actually not used in their template like "left". Make sure, that you can see the Module title on your webpage, before hiding the title! Only then statistics are captured!
- An activation module must be set to "public" access, if you want to count all visits. If you set it to "registered" or "special" you would only count those visits
- If the module does not work, you can also download & install as alternative the activation plugin.
- Some people are complaining, that the activation module is not completely invisible on the webpage as a empty border is draw on the page. That´s because your template is adding styles, so simply try to find another active position, where the template is not adding styles. (As alternative use just the activation plugin)
Good to know
- j4age includes a migration mechanism to convert the existing JoomlaStats Version (until 3.0.4) to j4age
- j4age is collecting over the time alot of information, please keep in eye on your DB size
Note
j4age is not Google Analytics, so please do not try to compare us one to one to them. Unlike Google Analytics we are open source and you can review our algorithms. It is hard to differentiate bots from regular visitors, especially as they try to pretend to be regular visitors. We have applied many advanced algorithms to get it under control and this will result into slightly different results between Google Analytics and us.
Future
We will improve the "Cache" / History feature, so that you can drop data from the database without losing information on the Summary pages. We currently operating in a similar way, but a refectoring of the algorithms are required.
We also work further more advanced features, but more details are provied 2012.
*************** ATTENTION *****************
If you experience any problems, please contact us first on the j4age webpage!!
If you use j4age, please post a rating and a review at the Joomla
Images
Great tool, with fast and reliable support :)
Once report extraction is improved this will be as close to perfect as you'd want.
Once report extraction is improved this will be as close to perfect as you'd want.
I am sorry for this evaluation but I lost three days in trying to migrate from JoomlaStats.
Some post installation steps are terrific. One query last for more than 14 hours! and I have had to execute it via an SQL client not via Joomla backend (correctly updating the step in the table configuration). My database is not huge, my site has an average of 120 visitors a day and I have data for only two years. If my database is huge, what would happen if someone with 1000 visits per day migrate from Joomlastats to j4age?
I think moreover that you should not update directly jstats tables, but create new tables with different names for j4age and then separately transform and import data from old joomlastats tables to the new ones.
Finally when I have finished all the steps, data have not been imported correctly.
I have restored back my joomla installation to JoomlaStats.
Finally, my consideration are: if you have a previous installation of Joomlastats DO NOT migrate to j4age. If it is the first installation, give it a try.
Some post installation steps are terrific. One query last for more than 14 hours! and I have had to execute it via an SQL client not via Joomla backend (correctly updating the step in the table configuration). My database is not huge, my site has an average of 120 visitors a day and I have data for only two years. If my database is huge, what would happen if someone with 1000 visits per day migrate from Joomlastats to j4age?
I think moreover that you should not update directly jstats tables, but create new tables with different names for j4age and then separately transform and import data from old joomlastats tables to the new ones.
Finally when I have finished all the steps, data have not been imported correctly.
I have restored back my joomla installation to JoomlaStats.
Finally, my consideration are: if you have a previous installation of Joomlastats DO NOT migrate to j4age. If it is the first installation, give it a try.
Owner's reply
Hello,
thank you for your response, even after I thing you should have tried to contact me first via the technical support.
Having data of 2 years and even if there are "just" 120 visitors / day means, that the DB is around 100 MB. Dealing with those amounts of data is quite tough and there are two scenarios why it can fail
1) Your PHP & MySQL timeout settings are too low and there is no chance to perform any of updates. I am taking about ad of an web-page, which is having 10.000 visitors per day.
I am so sorry, that you are one of the rare cases, where the migration process does not run smoothly, but especially for those cases we have established the support. We might not be able to solve the issue within seconds, but at least we can see how we can quickly find a solution together
J4age is the newer version of JoomlaStats, that's why we have to update our tables. Some users do have a memory limit, so we can not simply duplicate the tables. We always highlighted, that you should do a backup before the update to make sure, that everything can be restored.
I have to say, that your rating is actually not fair. You experienced one issue in the migration feature we offer, but you actually have not rated the component itself. It's probably better to stop offering the migration process at all.
I was quite unpleased with Google Analytics which was the main reason why I installed this component. Boy was I suprised after I realized my site was having about six times the amount of hits Google was telling me.
Works like a charm!
Works like a charm!
Owner's reply
I just like to make sure, that this does not result into a wrong impression.
Google Analytics is using Javascript to count visitors, but some bots do not support Javascript, which results in less recognized visits.
Please make sure, that you do not set the filter option to "All" and focus on the "Regular" visitors.
Please be also informed, that we currently experience some issues with having the cache plugin switched on. j4age won't count multiple page clicks on the same page.
Although I ran into a bit of a problem when trying to install the component, I realized that I hadn't downloaded the com completely before attempting to install it. Even after installing the modules in the wrong order, the installation was robust enough to compensate for my errors. Went very smooth and the product works fantastic.
Although I can't cross the pond to tip a pint with you boys, I'll certainly make a donation for a very well put together product.
Hats off to you gents!!
Although I can't cross the pond to tip a pint with you boys, I'll certainly make a donation for a very well put together product.
Hats off to you gents!!
I am a fairly new joomla user. I was looking for an extenion to see who's been on our church website and I found this one. After reading the reviews on this one and several others I chose this one. So far I have not been disappointed. It was very easy to set-up. It has been a very helpful tool. It lets me track who has been on our website and also what pages they are visiting. This helps in tweaking the online content of our site to better serve our purpose.
I have noticed the same thing the previous reviewer noticed about the difference in the whois online and this component.
Overall a great component!
Thank you for a great extension!
Jeff
I have noticed the same thing the previous reviewer noticed about the difference in the whois online and this component.
Overall a great component!
Thank you for a great extension!
Jeff
I installed this package on two sites. Installation was quite smooth, but attention, follow the instructions carefully and be sure to enable all relevant components and plugins. The package is light, appropriate and elegant. I like the graphics, particularly the one that shows the returning clients as lines flowing from the previous visits. You get breakdowns by the expected groupings, such as country, page links, search engines, browsers, referrers, keywords, etc. There are hundreds of bots prelisted and bot behaviour is even detected live (an "unknown bot" shows up in my listings) and you can define a user as a bot if you suspect one. I won't miss Google Analytics at very much. The only thing I got with Google that I don't see here is nice country maps with the cities sprinkled all over. But having statistics right in Joomla is so much better. So altogether, a rather complete component. Congratulations to the developers for a huge, well-done job.
I have used this component for 2 weeks and am glad I did. Since my visitors are mostly very quiet, it's very difficult to guess whether they are present, what they like to read and whether they generally like what I present them. Having this tool is to be able to have somekind of a feedback after all. I use this together with the standard Who's online component of Joomla 1.5.22. I noticed that this component is reporting very high numbers of online users while j4age is showing much lower numbers. So I asked the support team how this can be. Andreas Halbig replied and ask me for some screenshots to study the case. Then he studied the standard Who's online component and concluded that it's this component that is counting too many online users. A free product with a professional grade support is more value than you can ask for. So I write this unsolicited review to thank them for their support.
As an improvement I would like to see an accompanying improved Who's Online component to replace the standard component, if that is not too much to ask.
As an improvement I would like to see an accompanying improved Who's Online component to replace the standard component, if that is not too much to ask.
I've always been reluctant to any kind of pressure, so at first the notice on your webpage ("We've stopped all development activities on j4age until we receive more reviews") made me to decide not to write any reviews at all.
But after couple of days using this component I've changed my mind. Here is my two cents (based on previous experience with JoomlaStats):
- absolutely smooth upgrade from JoomlaStats component
- much better functionality than JoomlaStats
- better, more detailed and more transparent (when you get used to it) statistics
- in my opinion currently the best available Site Traffic Statistics component (or at least I didn't find any matching)
But after couple of days using this component I've changed my mind. Here is my two cents (based on previous experience with JoomlaStats):
- absolutely smooth upgrade from JoomlaStats component
- much better functionality than JoomlaStats
- better, more detailed and more transparent (when you get used to it) statistics
- in my opinion currently the best available Site Traffic Statistics component (or at least I didn't find any matching)
I upgraded from JoomlaStats 3.0.3 No problems and pretty straightforward.
JoomlaStats has some problems because it uses deprecated PHP functions (ereg), and it doesn't seem to be developed anymore, so I was looking for a replacement.
j4age does the job. Thx
JoomlaStats has some problems because it uses deprecated PHP functions (ereg), and it doesn't seem to be developed anymore, so I was looking for a replacement.
j4age does the job. Thx
Awersome component!
After a long search, I can confidently say it has no analogues!
Easy installation and a full statistics of your traffic.
Thank you very much guys.
I hope you will continue to develop your product is!
After a long search, I can confidently say it has no analogues!
Easy installation and a full statistics of your traffic.
Thank you very much guys.
I hope you will continue to develop your product is!
Ii have been looking for a replacement of the joomla1.0 statistics component for our "NooLab" website and found this. It worked straight out of the "box", everything runs perfect. You not only see your visitors country; each visit is tracked down to individual page hits and the duration the page visit lasted.
There are only minor drawbacks, not decreasing the "excellent" of the vote: (1) the output of last-visitors module can not be easily formatted by css (some id is missing), (2) a statistics as per page across all visits is missing (at least I didnot find one). Again, excellent work!!!
There are only minor drawbacks, not decreasing the "excellent" of the vote: (1) the output of last-visitors module can not be easily formatted by css (some id is missing), (2) a statistics as per page across all visits is missing (at least I didnot find one). Again, excellent work!!!
If I had to give one weakness of j4age, it'd be that it does not actually log everything - it seems there's a small part of the activity that's sometimes missing, a click here and there that isn't logged.
Other than that, it's great and I'm quite happy with it. I can see precisely what my visitors are doing and what they seem to like, what parts of the site they visit and which ones they seem to ignore or maybe not see at all, and that's exactly what I was looking for.
Other than that, it's great and I'm quite happy with it. I can see precisely what my visitors are doing and what they seem to like, what parts of the site they visit and which ones they seem to ignore or maybe not see at all, and that's exactly what I was looking for.
I have seen a lot of component like this here in Joomla then I get it for trial and I said I will comment after a month of using it. But when I installed it I find it very amazing that’s why I commented after 1 hour of using it. Thanks to the developer of this extension. My Final word is get it now while its free because an extension like this should have a price.
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