This module is designed with shared hosting limitations in mind, utilizing a smart file-based caching system to eliminate redundant API requests and prevent server overhead.

Key Features

• Real-time Live Statistics: Display active visitors online right now, total visitors today, and pageviews today.
• Historical Trends: View accumulated statistics for the last 7 days and 30 days.
• Geographical Insights:
  • Countries Online: Live indicator mapping current active sessions to country flags (via FlagCDN).
  • Top Countries Tabbed Block: Modern tabbed panel containing breakdown distributions by day, week, or month with animated percentage progress bars.
• Interactive Dynamic Vector Chart (SVG): Completely native SVG-rendered visit dynamics line chart supporting 7-day and 30-day view switching with zero heavy external JavaScript frameworks.
• Advanced Intelligent Caching: Built-in file caching mechanism preventing unnecessary API overhead and ensuring super-fast frontend loading speeds.
• Advanced Debug Mode (Administrators Only Option): Complete technical transparent overview layout checking API weights, HTTP statuses, response sizes, memory footprints, execution durations, and Matomo/PHP environment versions.
• Granular Visibility Engine: Toggle individual fields or entire sections on/off dynamically directly from the administrator control board.

Technical Interface Overview

1. Main Indicators Card

A modern, minimalist widget component styling core tracking statistics with clean SVG graphics icons:
* Online Now: Real-time ping.
* Visitors Today & Views Today: Daily cumulative traffic overview.
* 7 Days / 30 Days: Extended traffic context.

2. Geographical Demographics & Interactive Charts

• Displays active regional distributions and total localized counts.
• Provides native dropdown filters to inspect long-term territorial engagement weights.
• Renders seamless graphical visualizations of visit peaks with hover interactions.

3. Core Administrative Control Panel

• Connection Strings: Simple Matomo Base URL, Site ID (idsite), and API Secure Token Auth setups.
• Caching Adjustments: Fine-tune expiration periods in seconds to manage API payloads.
• Display Controls: Dedicated "Metrics Display" sub-panel allowing complete architectural toggling (Show/Hide) of individual sections depending on operational scopes.

4. Advanced System Diagnostic Inspector (Debug Utility)

• Live feedback testing connection metrics (API CONNECTION OK / API CONNECTION ERROR).
• Comprehensive payload mapping showing size allocations across internal methods (Live.getLastVisitsDetails, UserCountry, VisitsSummary).

Technical Architecture

The module utilizes Joomla's internal API engine and Matomo's API.getBulkRequest to fetch all enabled metrics within a single, optimized POST cURL request.

[User Browser] ──> [Joomla Website]
│
(Is local JSON cache valid?)
├──> YES ──> [Read Cache File] ──> (Render HTML instantly)
│
└──> NO ──> [Bulk API Request] ──> [Matomo Server]
│
(Update Local Cache)

Configuration

Go to System -> Site Modules and open Matomo Live Counter.

Connection Settings:

• Matomo Installation URL: The absolute URL to your analytics suite (e.g., https://analytics.your-site.com/).
• Site ID (idsite): The numerical ID assigned to your website inside Matomo.
• Token Auth: Your secure Matomo API access token (token_auth), required to pull statistical data.
• Cache Time: Cache lifetime in seconds (Default: 300 seconds / 5 minutes).
• Force Language: Choose whether the module should adapt to the user's active language automatically or stay locked to a specific language.

Requirements

• Joomla! 4.x / 5.x / 6.x (Ready)
• PHP 8.1 or higher
• PHP cURL extension enabled
• Matomo Analytics (Self-hosted or Cloud) with API access

Update
The extension is updated through the standard Joomla Update System, with all releases available for download at:
https://github.com/TommiLin/Matomo-Analytics-Live-Counter/releases

Author
Developed with ❤️ by TommiLin