1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,720 So, hello and welcome everybody. 2 00:00:08,720 --> 00:00:14,280 You might today have heard already a lot about Matomo, from different angles, from different 3 00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:22,160 use cases, from beginner-friendly content to topics that are focusing quite on experts. 4 00:00:22,160 --> 00:00:29,920 And I guess a lot of questions about the topic of Matomo, beginning from usability to technical 5 00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:33,000 questions, a lot of questions might have arised. 6 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:38,440 So that's why today we have a Q&A session, where you can ask these questions you have 7 00:00:38,440 --> 00:00:43,440 about Matomo to these speakers we have here today. 8 00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:49,060 So the way this works is quite similar to the talks we have already had today. 9 00:00:49,060 --> 00:00:52,480 You can see obviously the live streamer if you're watching. 10 00:00:52,480 --> 00:00:58,240 And we have a chat room for this where you can ask any question you have about Matomo. 11 00:00:58,240 --> 00:01:04,680 And I will then forward this question to one of the five speakers we have here in the room. 12 00:01:04,680 --> 00:01:10,560 So to give you a bit of time to collect your questions and post them in the chat room, 13 00:01:10,560 --> 00:01:15,440 I can start by quickly introducing our speakers here. 14 00:01:15,440 --> 00:01:17,320 So let's start with Ronan. 15 00:01:17,320 --> 00:01:25,080 Ronan is a Matomo analytics expert since 2010, and he's mostly focusing on training and doing 16 00:01:25,080 --> 00:01:32,000 consulting for all types of companies, institutions, always around about Matomo analytics. 17 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:40,500 Stefan Koning, our second expert here, is also an expert mostly on focusing on digital analytics 18 00:01:40,500 --> 00:01:42,960 and conversion rate optimization. 19 00:01:42,960 --> 00:01:48,080 He has a lot of experience with Matomo and he will be able to answer your analytics related 20 00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:49,080 questions. 21 00:01:49,080 --> 00:01:55,680 Then we have Thomas Zernig, he's a CEO and web analytics expert from the border between 22 00:01:55,680 --> 00:01:57,520 Austria and Germany. 23 00:01:57,520 --> 00:02:03,120 And you might know him from the German Matomo explanation videos he does, or from the Power 24 00:02:03,120 --> 00:02:08,080 of the Extension Matomo helper, which might some of you will be using. 25 00:02:08,080 --> 00:02:14,600 And he will be able to answer your question about how to use Matomo and how to solve issues 26 00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:17,040 using the user interface. 27 00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:21,800 And we also have here as our fourth speaker, Stefan Giel. 28 00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:25,480 He is part of the Matomo team since 2010. 29 00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:30,480 And he is working full time on the Matomo core development in the last years. 30 00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:36,520 So he is part of the core development team and expert for all the code related questions 31 00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:38,560 in Matomo. 32 00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:44,160 And besides this, he is also maintaining the Matomo translation and device detector, the 33 00:02:44,160 --> 00:02:51,720 separate project, which converts user agents into the nice device information reports we 34 00:02:51,720 --> 00:02:53,720 can see in Matomo. 35 00:02:53,720 --> 00:02:56,320 And lastly, we also have Peter Bolleke. 36 00:02:56,320 --> 00:03:01,680 He's part of the Matomo community from the very beginning in 2008. 37 00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:06,800 And since then, he's supporting companies with all operations around Matomo. 38 00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:15,440 And he can answer all kinds of technical questions around Matomo. 39 00:03:15,440 --> 00:03:25,360 And yeah, I hope everyone can see the screen. 40 00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:30,160 And let's just wait a few minutes for questions. 41 00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:36,560 Maybe in the meantime, while people are typing questions, some of you, if anyone of you wants 42 00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:48,400 to do a quick introduction or talk about some topic, they can talk about it now. 43 00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:52,640 Maybe a question to all. 44 00:03:52,640 --> 00:03:58,240 How do you learn something about Matomo or what is your entry point or what was your 45 00:03:58,240 --> 00:03:59,800 entry point? 46 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:11,680 Or where do you can ask questions beyond this Matomo camp? 47 00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:19,200 First of all, maybe not everyone knows that there is a forum, a board, where you can ask 48 00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:26,280 questions, where you can ask questions in mother tongue, like Germany. 49 00:04:26,280 --> 00:04:30,120 There is a good support in there. 50 00:04:30,120 --> 00:04:38,920 And the other one is the Matomo support if you take the Matomo Cloud version. 51 00:04:38,920 --> 00:04:48,000 And maybe the other ones have also some tips how to get more knowledge about Matomo. 52 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:49,000 A good point. 53 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:52,320 I forgot to introduce myself, of course. 54 00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:58,520 I'm Lucas Winkler, and most of you will know me from the Matomo forum. 55 00:04:58,520 --> 00:05:04,840 I spend a lot of my time answering people's questions on the Matomo forum, but also maintaining 56 00:05:04,840 --> 00:05:09,320 some other documentation and answering to GitHub issues. 57 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:13,640 And this is also kind of the answer to your question. 58 00:05:13,640 --> 00:05:19,160 If you have any questions about Matomo, if it's a general question, something doesn't 59 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:25,320 work on your setup, something like this, the best way probably is the Matomo forum. 60 00:05:25,320 --> 00:05:30,760 A lot of people already have asked their questions there, and it's a great way to slowly get 61 00:05:30,760 --> 00:05:33,360 to the bottom of the issue. 62 00:05:33,360 --> 00:05:38,920 If you know that the thing you're asking is definitively a bug, and you have definitive 63 00:05:38,920 --> 00:05:45,000 steps how to reproduce them, you can skip the forum and go straight to GitHub and create 64 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:50,080 a bug issue. 65 00:05:50,080 --> 00:05:57,440 And that way, ideally describe it in a lot of detail so people can reproduce it. 66 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:04,720 And this way, people can see it, it's quickly organized, and it's easier to fix them. 67 00:06:04,720 --> 00:06:05,720 Okay. 68 00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:09,920 While we did this introduction, there have been a lot of questions. 69 00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:15,120 And I'll start with one question from Peter Jones. 70 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:19,560 He asks, we can add the users in the Matomo interface. 71 00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:24,600 I wonder if it will be possible to use groups in the future. 72 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:29,480 This will be useful when there are hundreds of thousands of users. 73 00:06:29,480 --> 00:06:35,400 Does anyone have to say something about this? 74 00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:36,920 Maybe it's Stefan. 75 00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:42,480 I personally don't know about this suggestion. 76 00:06:42,480 --> 00:06:48,840 I'm not even sure if someone has even suggested it until now. 77 00:06:48,840 --> 00:06:53,840 But indeed, there are Matomo instances with a large amount of users, and some kind of 78 00:06:53,840 --> 00:07:01,280 grouping might be useful, especially to give access rights to a site to many people at 79 00:07:01,280 --> 00:07:02,280 once. 80 00:07:02,280 --> 00:07:12,440 There had been a couple of requests for a more extensive permission management in Matomo. 81 00:07:12,440 --> 00:07:18,960 And yeah, some of them were, I guess, asking for groups, but there currently aren't any 82 00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:20,960 plans. 83 00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:31,680 Then again, as a workaround until then, all of the user management features can be also 84 00:07:31,680 --> 00:07:33,560 accessed via the API. 85 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:40,560 So if the issue is just having to manually add hundreds of users to a site, then of course, 86 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:45,800 you can easily automate this with a script in the programming language of your choice 87 00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:52,600 and add the users there. 88 00:07:52,600 --> 00:07:54,320 I hope this roughly answers your question. 89 00:07:54,320 --> 00:07:57,240 There's a bit of a delay, so I will go on. 90 00:07:57,240 --> 00:08:02,480 And if you have any follow up to this, simply ask again. 91 00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:08,120 So Valentin asks, which killer feature from Google Analytics do you think should be included 92 00:08:08,120 --> 00:08:13,040 in Matomo? 93 00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:18,040 Secondary dimensions. 94 00:08:18,040 --> 00:08:27,920 There is the custom report, it's a very great plugin for Matomo Cloud, or you can pay for 95 00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:30,480 the on-premise version. 96 00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:42,760 But I missed something like secondary dimension in time to filter in time, not to make the 97 00:08:42,760 --> 00:08:50,720 custom report and then maybe the data takes a little bit longer to process. 98 00:08:50,720 --> 00:09:00,560 So I wish, I think I added a feature request to the second dimension feature, but on the 99 00:09:00,560 --> 00:09:08,800 technical side, it's a very huge feature and I think it's very complicated to integrate 100 00:09:08,800 --> 00:09:09,800 into Matomo. 101 00:09:09,800 --> 00:09:22,320 I think the data visualization part is as well missing somehow, highly asked by a Google 102 00:09:22,320 --> 00:09:25,040 Analytics user who was Google Data Studio. 103 00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:32,720 You will have a conference tomorrow from Baptiste Tivand about how to use Metabase with Matomo 104 00:09:32,720 --> 00:09:38,720 Analytics, but it's still something which is kind of tacky, so you cannot put it within 105 00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:40,560 the end of a marketer. 106 00:09:40,560 --> 00:09:47,240 So I think working more on the integration of Matomo with a third party data visualization 107 00:09:47,240 --> 00:10:02,040 system or to have its own more sexy data visualization system is of paramount importance for Matomo. 108 00:10:02,040 --> 00:10:08,480 One feature that could be included that Valentin suggested that, now that I read it, also find 109 00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:13,920 a good idea is simply a live view that shows the number of hits in the last five minutes 110 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:21,680 to get a really close how many people are accessing the website right now view, which 111 00:10:21,680 --> 00:10:26,640 incidentally, now that I'm looking at the reports for the Matomo camp, might also be 112 00:10:26,640 --> 00:10:32,240 something interesting to see. 113 00:10:32,240 --> 00:10:38,920 In addition to I agree with Thomas as well, definitely secondary dimensions, but also 114 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:44,960 a decent way to import and add additional data into Matomo to combine it with the data 115 00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:52,640 set that you already have in the thing that would make a lot of sense as well. 116 00:10:52,640 --> 00:11:01,120 Okay, I see an interesting another question from Peter Jones. 117 00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:06,600 They have an older PVIC instance, but are trying to migrate it to Matomo. 118 00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:10,800 What are your experiences of migrating PVIC data into Matomo? 119 00:11:10,800 --> 00:11:15,120 Maybe something for Peter or Stefan. 120 00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:20,920 Well, I can take on this one. 121 00:11:20,920 --> 00:11:21,920 It is possible. 122 00:11:21,920 --> 00:11:26,120 It depends on how much data do you have in the instance. 123 00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:31,320 So also with low amounts of data and also with high amounts of data, it's definitely 124 00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:32,320 possible. 125 00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:37,800 But it can with a higher amount of data take some time because a lot of scheme changes 126 00:11:37,800 --> 00:11:41,000 for the MySQL database are necessary. 127 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:50,720 And also things can break because the version jump from two or three to four is a major 128 00:11:50,720 --> 00:11:51,720 one. 129 00:11:51,720 --> 00:11:57,280 So a lot of things in the database scheme have been optimized and have been changed 130 00:11:57,280 --> 00:11:58,840 also. 131 00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:04,080 So you should definitely make sure to have a real good backup before you start doing 132 00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:06,080 that migration. 133 00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:14,160 And then think also about some outage of your Matomo instance while you're updating, at 134 00:12:14,160 --> 00:12:18,800 least with a bigger amount of data you have in your instance. 135 00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:25,460 Lock around could be, for example, like you could just leave the tracker running or writing 136 00:12:25,460 --> 00:12:27,160 into a log file. 137 00:12:27,160 --> 00:12:33,840 And then after your migration is complete, you can import this log file with the replay 138 00:12:33,840 --> 00:12:36,540 log functionality of the log importer. 139 00:12:36,540 --> 00:12:39,780 So you don't lose too much data. 140 00:12:39,780 --> 00:12:46,240 So the replay logging probably is the best solution for importing nearly this data that 141 00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:51,160 would have come into the instance while you had this outage. 142 00:12:51,160 --> 00:12:58,240 But all in all, you have to make sure that you have a few hours of outage in your Matomo 143 00:12:58,240 --> 00:12:59,240 instance. 144 00:12:59,240 --> 00:13:03,280 So your users have to know and the stakeholders have to know. 145 00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:11,320 But all in all, I also updated, I think, 20 to 30 big instances to Matomo from Pivik or 146 00:13:11,320 --> 00:13:18,320 from the early versions, and everything went perfectly well. 147 00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:24,200 One minor thing I also want to add is something a lot of, even if it's a small instance, something 148 00:13:24,200 --> 00:13:30,460 a lot of people are struggling with, if they have a really old Pivik version, is that this 149 00:13:30,460 --> 00:13:35,800 really old version, of course, also runs with a really old version of PHP, and there might 150 00:13:35,800 --> 00:13:40,680 not even be a version of PHP that is really old Pivik version is compatible with. 151 00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:43,880 And the newest Matomo version is compatible with. 152 00:13:43,880 --> 00:13:49,760 So if it's a really old version, it might be useful to do a few intermediate jumps of 153 00:13:49,760 --> 00:13:52,520 a few intermediate versions of Matomo. 154 00:13:52,520 --> 00:13:57,760 And maybe if the compatibility requirements also require it, also intermediate versions 155 00:13:57,760 --> 00:14:03,640 of PHP to make sure the migration runs as smooth as possible. 156 00:14:03,640 --> 00:14:09,560 A lot of people might not know it, but on builds.matomo.org, the download page, you can 157 00:14:09,560 --> 00:14:17,320 download every single Matomo version, I think that has been released since 2008. 158 00:14:17,320 --> 00:14:31,240 So this way you can easily update to another old version before you do the next jump. 159 00:14:31,240 --> 00:14:38,080 Another question from Juliet is, is there a possibility to aggregate that data directly 160 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:39,240 in Matomo? 161 00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:44,400 So the number of users grouped by a certain custom variable, for instance. 162 00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:50,760 She says I'm mostly using the API and then aggregate that data with Python pandas. 163 00:14:50,760 --> 00:14:56,480 Personally, I can't say much helpful things about it. 164 00:14:56,480 --> 00:15:01,680 Don't really have much experience with any use case where you would have to aggregate 165 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:02,920 data. 166 00:15:02,920 --> 00:15:08,960 Of course, the way you are doing it, using the API and then doing any data processing 167 00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:15,760 afterwards, of course, always works, but might not be the most ideal one. 168 00:15:15,760 --> 00:15:20,040 Probably Juliet, it would be good to elaborate a bit on that, what you're trying to achieve, 169 00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:28,280 because in the custom dimension reports, you have everything grouped by the custom dimension 170 00:15:28,280 --> 00:15:34,120 in the sense of that every custom dimension has its own row in that report. 171 00:15:34,120 --> 00:15:41,040 If you're trying to group all other reports in the dashboard, for example, for those custom 172 00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:46,480 dimensions, combinations or a single custom dimension, this is probably not possible in 173 00:15:46,480 --> 00:15:48,040 the dashboard at least. 174 00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:57,600 So going with an external solution like Python pandas or Tableau Power BI Metabase or something 175 00:15:57,600 --> 00:16:02,840 like that would be the way to go, at least for the moment. 176 00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:19,800 One quick note to Peter's previous explanation for replaying the logs by Chris is if one 177 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:27,120 tries to go this way and jump the downtime of the upgrade by afterwards replaying the 178 00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:31,880 server logs that reach the Matomo server, one of course has to pay attention that all 179 00:16:31,880 --> 00:16:37,320 requests sent to Matomo are GET requests, not POST requests, otherwise, of course, the 180 00:16:37,320 --> 00:16:45,560 data won't be written in the reports in the server logs. 181 00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:49,320 Mikael has another question about database speed. 182 00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:55,880 He says that the database speed is a big issue and is it possible or has someone tried to 183 00:16:55,880 --> 00:17:00,960 use Solr or any other database for quicker queries? 184 00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:09,120 Maybe Stefan or I can say something about it. 185 00:17:09,120 --> 00:17:17,200 As far as I know, there aren't any plans to support other databases because it's hard 186 00:17:17,200 --> 00:17:23,240 to start supporting other databases when you have a software that should be available for 187 00:17:23,240 --> 00:17:32,520 every user on a hosted system and MySQL is simply the mostly supported database. 188 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:40,320 Indeed, the main issue, I think, is if you wanted to add support for another database 189 00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:47,440 and it doesn't matter if it's something like Postgres SQL or something completely different, 190 00:17:47,440 --> 00:17:53,920 it would always mean you'd have to rewrite a huge portion of Matomo. 191 00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:59,480 And in this case, it might even be quicker to simply export the data from Matomo. 192 00:17:59,480 --> 00:18:07,920 And if you're already rewriting it from scratch, do the queries in this database directly. 193 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:13,320 And of course, the other thing is if you would rewrite a huge portion of Matomo to support 194 00:18:13,320 --> 00:18:21,440 other databases that are maybe more specialized for analytics data, is that either both versions 195 00:18:21,440 --> 00:18:27,040 that would differ quite a lot, usually would need to be maintained in the future, which 196 00:18:27,040 --> 00:18:34,400 is really hard to do, or the MySQL, only MySQL compatible version would have to be dropped. 197 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:39,200 But this would mean that nearly everyone who can at the moment simply install Matomo on 198 00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:45,720 their server using MySQL, MariaDB or something like this, would have major issues continuing 199 00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:48,440 to use Matomo in the future. 200 00:18:48,440 --> 00:18:56,360 So because of all of this, I think it won't change in the near future, that Matomo will 201 00:18:56,360 --> 00:19:00,760 be MySQL and MariaDB only. 202 00:19:00,760 --> 00:19:08,800 An interesting question by Peter Makers is, are there any ideas about integrating a website 203 00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:14,200 carbon calculator, which measures how much impact your website has on the planet? 204 00:19:14,200 --> 00:19:19,520 It could be a unique selling point for potential new users. 205 00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:25,720 If no one else has something to say about this. 206 00:19:25,720 --> 00:19:31,480 I think this is one of the use cases, which would be a really nice Matomo plugin, because 207 00:19:31,480 --> 00:19:36,240 it's something only a few people would be interested in, but it would be a nice feature 208 00:19:36,240 --> 00:19:43,760 for them, and it's something you can quite easily put around a Matomo without having 209 00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:47,720 to modify something of the core code. 210 00:19:47,720 --> 00:19:51,680 So this would be a nice, simple plugin. 211 00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:56,720 And if someone gets around to programming it, it would be really nice if they could 212 00:19:56,720 --> 00:20:01,360 publish it on the marketplace, I think. 213 00:20:01,360 --> 00:20:08,240 In the meantime, maybe a question about translation. 214 00:20:08,240 --> 00:20:13,760 How does the translation process work in Matomo? 215 00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:21,680 If Matomo isn't completely translated in the language I speak, or if I notice a type or 216 00:20:21,680 --> 00:20:27,000 a sentence that doesn't really make sense in Matomo, how can I fix this? 217 00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:28,800 How can I report this? 218 00:20:28,800 --> 00:20:34,520 Maybe Stefan has something to say about this. 219 00:20:34,520 --> 00:20:41,840 We recently switched our translation platform to Contribute2, and all our translations are 220 00:20:41,840 --> 00:20:44,920 currently hosted on Weblate. 221 00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:49,240 It's another open source software to maintain translations. 222 00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:56,600 And everyone can suggest or change the translations there to any language. 223 00:20:56,600 --> 00:21:06,240 And from there, the translations are automatically pushed to our GitHub repository and will later 224 00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:16,200 be included in any new release of Matomo or any of our plugins. 225 00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:33,600 OK, then a bit more analytics-based question from Arribas is, they are currently using 226 00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:42,160 Matomo in order to save page data, but would we like to be able to categorize the pages 227 00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:43,960 based on the department? 228 00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:46,560 The data for this is already in the page. 229 00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:52,440 And could you please let us know how to proceed? 230 00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:54,080 I can take this one. 231 00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:59,400 It's basically what you could do is, if the information is already there, you should be 232 00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:05,440 able to store those kind of input within custom dimensions and then basically also be able 233 00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:08,440 to segment on this later on as well in Matomo. 234 00:22:08,440 --> 00:22:15,840 I would recommend to start measuring it together with the default page view tracking and also 235 00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:21,800 add some certain custom dimension tracking with the given values that you have for the 236 00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:24,880 given departments and store it there. 237 00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:31,160 And then you are able to filter it, segment it, or create custom reports with it, as you 238 00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:32,160 wish. 239 00:22:32,160 --> 00:22:38,920 Yeah, it should be easily doable with the tag manager. 240 00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:44,960 Typically, you could just say, OK, there's this element on the page which is on the future 241 00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:48,640 on the footer who has those given HTML attribute. 242 00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:54,720 So I'm taking out this given attribute that I insert within the custom dimension field 243 00:22:54,720 --> 00:23:01,440 in the Matomo custom variable, configuration variable within the tag manager. 244 00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:06,120 And every time that the page is going to be loaded, as this given element is on the page, 245 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:09,480 it's going to grab it and put it as a custom dimension. 246 00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:16,560 And then it will slice your categories accordingly. 247 00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:24,200 Perhaps also as an important comment on exactly this problem is, from the performance view 248 00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:32,000 of things, you should always try to put as much business complexity in the tracking runtime. 249 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:39,560 So try to put as much complexity as possible from your data reporting and dashboard reporting 250 00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,340 and your segment definitions, et cetera. 251 00:23:42,340 --> 00:23:48,480 Try to put it into the tag manager, because if you have to filter for a custom dimension, 252 00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:59,200 it is very quick, it is very performant, very effective, and also the underlying MySQL queries. 253 00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:09,720 If you, for example, have your segment definition grouping 100 page URLs to try to define your 254 00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:16,040 branch or something else, some page grouping via segment, it will be very ineffective and 255 00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:17,040 slow. 256 00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:24,080 So try always to do as much as possible in the tag manager with custom dimensions, track 257 00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:34,120 some events with extra data, and so your performance stays good. 258 00:24:34,120 --> 00:24:46,960 I just noticed that I missed a question a bit above for Melanie. 259 00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:52,240 They have problems aggregating certain reports where monthly reports have fewer data than 260 00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:56,520 the daily reports in the internal search report. 261 00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,600 And which actions could we take to analyze the problem? 262 00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:06,760 So I think this is something that's hard to do a general guess, but how can one approach 263 00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:09,360 such an issue? 264 00:25:09,360 --> 00:25:14,520 What is the easy way to get in the direction of the issue? 265 00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:19,240 How to start troubleshooting? 266 00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:31,320 So perhaps I will just start on trying to answer that. 267 00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:40,640 The troubleshooting probably starts with making clear which part of the system makes this 268 00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:41,640 error. 269 00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:54,600 So probably one thing to keep in mind is that the archiving could fail on the monthly archives. 270 00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:57,280 Mostly this is the case when the memory limit is reached. 271 00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:05,200 So you will have to search in the server log files for errors in the archiving process. 272 00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:10,800 When you have a look, so if you're using the cron drop, so you should make sure that you 273 00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:13,600 disable the browser archiving. 274 00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:20,240 I think we can attach some links to that page later on in the chat also that you can make 275 00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:25,320 sure that you enable the cron drop for the asynchronous archiving of data. 276 00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:34,520 And then you can also read on that page how to log the things that this cron drop writes 277 00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:41,720 to the console, how to log it into a file and then analyze that file for errors in the 278 00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,680 monthly archive generation. 279 00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:53,080 That's probably in 90% of the cases the problem that the archiving job is failing for some 280 00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:54,080 reason. 281 00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:57,200 That's in general I think a good advice. 282 00:26:57,200 --> 00:27:05,440 If there are weird issues with the reports, maybe check the output of the archiving process 283 00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:09,360 if you're using a cron drop to regularly call it. 284 00:27:09,360 --> 00:27:14,360 Because it can be quite verbose and there are some parameters which you can add to make 285 00:27:14,360 --> 00:27:15,880 it even more verbose. 286 00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:20,800 And sometimes you can find something weird or some warnings in there which are a good 287 00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:25,000 hint in which direction to look. 288 00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:33,040 A short question from Niklas who has problems with the heatmaps before I will just quickly 289 00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:38,840 recommend you to send a quick email about it to the premium plugin support team. 290 00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:43,560 They can help you with this probably quite easily. 291 00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:49,360 Then another question from Chris because we talked about get and post requests previously. 292 00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:53,240 If there is a way to switch all requests to get. 293 00:27:53,240 --> 00:28:01,000 I can say something on that and by default the Matomo tracking uses send beacon from 294 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,400 the browser which uses a post request. 295 00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:09,520 You can either disable this with the method disable always use beacon or something like 296 00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:15,880 that or you can force the request method with set request method. 297 00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:24,400 Those should be JavaScript tracking options you can send with a tracking code. 298 00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:29,680 The only thing to keep in mind there is of course there is a limit of how much data can 299 00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,720 be sent in the get request. 300 00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:39,120 Matomo also the old versions automatically switch to a post request if the older data 301 00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:41,720 that would be sent would be too large. 302 00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:47,400 I think it's quite a lot of data that would need to be sent for it to be too large for 303 00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:48,400 a get. 304 00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:53,680 But if the website you're tracking has enormously long URLs or something like this, this is 305 00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,400 something to maybe keep in mind. 306 00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:02,520 Just to mention it, this will always be the case if you are tracking heatmaps and stuff 307 00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:10,120 like that because it tries to send all the HTML body with a tracking request and that 308 00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:17,000 is required to send with post as get won't work. 309 00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:22,920 Another question by Valentin, which was a bit answered in the chat already, I just want 310 00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:25,680 to mention it here on stream for the recording. 311 00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:31,080 If it is possible to set the custom time for a scheduled task, for example, to choose that 312 00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:35,840 the scheduled task should always run in the night when there are fewer Matomo website 313 00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:40,600 visitors that the server has less load or something like this. 314 00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:44,040 And as far as I know, there isn't yet a feature like this. 315 00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:48,640 It might be something that could be added and that a lot of people might be interested 316 00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:49,640 in. 317 00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:55,480 A workaround that Tasman is suggested is, of course, you can run the Matomo scheduled 318 00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:57,440 task individually. 319 00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:03,480 So if this is something you care about, you could set up a separate Chrome jobs for all 320 00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:08,160 the scheduled tasks in Matomo. 321 00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:17,680 One question by T Scott is, are there plans to introduce filtering much like what exists 322 00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:24,480 in Google Analytics because segments don't cover all visits, which doesn't suit their 323 00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:25,480 purpose? 324 00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:39,240 As far as I know, there is actually an issue on GitHub, but I don't know the current state 325 00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:40,240 of it. 326 00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:43,360 But I guess it isn't planned currently. 327 00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:48,160 Yeah, I'm sharing the same answer. 328 00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:50,000 I don't have the answer here. 329 00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:55,880 So for the guys who are not familiar with Google Analytics, typically in Matomo, you 330 00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,280 get a different way of working. 331 00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:04,360 So they have like within the global settings, you can exclude by IP address and by adding, 332 00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:09,640 for example, the spam tracking prevention, you can exclude by countries, but you don't 333 00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:15,240 have as much flexibility as the Google Analytics filter, which are including those two dimensions 334 00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:21,600 that I just mentioned, including as well user agent, I forgot in Google Analytics, you have 335 00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:29,040 all the other dimensions, possibility to use as filter to come in, to filter out or include 336 00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,180 out within Google Analytics. 337 00:31:33,180 --> 00:31:36,960 And it's true that currently Matomo does not offer them all. 338 00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:39,240 And I don't know if they have plan of doing it. 339 00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:44,200 Yeah, I posted a link to the GitHub issue Stefan referred to. 340 00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:51,180 If you're interested in this topic, I'd recommend you to look it up there. 341 00:31:51,180 --> 00:31:56,240 In the meantime, while I'm looking for the chapter, one question I think would always 342 00:31:56,240 --> 00:32:04,400 be interesting to hear is, how can one contribute to Matomo? 343 00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:12,800 Either how can I report, notice a bug in Matomo, how can I report it, or if I know how to program, 344 00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:15,760 how can I even fix it myself? 345 00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:22,800 Okay, so it follows up, I think, a bit to the thing I mentioned in the beginning. 346 00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:29,400 So if you just have a vague issue and are not sure what is exactly going wrong, the 347 00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:32,240 easiest thing is to ask on the forum. 348 00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:38,200 And that way, find out a bit closer what exactly is the issue, what is going wrong. 349 00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:51,080 If you know exactly what is going wrong and how someone can reproduce it, then you can 350 00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,920 go directly to GitHub and create a GitHub issue for it. 351 00:32:54,920 --> 00:33:01,200 Of course, adding steps how to reproduce it makes it a lot easier to understand the issue, 352 00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:08,080 makes it a lot easier to fix it because oftentimes it's obvious for the person writing a GitHub 353 00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:16,040 issue to know, it's obvious for them what they are talking about, but if you're not 354 00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:19,960 up to date on what they are doing, it's quite hard to understand it. 355 00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:25,640 And adding steps to exactly reproduce the issue makes it a lot easier to understand 356 00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:35,040 the issue, and that way also a lot easier for a developer to debug it and then fix it. 357 00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:41,640 And of course, if you're a developer yourself and know how to fix it, then the easiest thing 358 00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:48,880 is of course to change the code, create a pull request with the change and contribute 359 00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:52,960 it to Matomo yourself. 360 00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:59,720 If you're a developer but don't know, not that familiar with Matomo, then you can also 361 00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:08,960 go to the Matomo developer page, which has a great page about how to get started with 362 00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:15,960 the code base of Matomo and how to set up a local Matomo development instance, which 363 00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:27,960 makes it a lot easier to contribute code changes. 364 00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:36,280 More analytics-related question about funnels, maybe for Stefano or Ronan, do you see the 365 00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:37,280 question yourself? 366 00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:40,880 I'll repeat it for people watching the recording. 367 00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:44,680 Talking about funnel refills, how is it working? 368 00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:49,760 If you have a funnel like this, where the first step is entry, then going to a conversion 369 00:34:49,760 --> 00:35:00,560 directly, does it get refills in the steps afterwards before the goal conversion? 370 00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:02,880 Maybe Ronan or Stefano have something to say about it. 371 00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:04,800 I'm not that familiar with it. 372 00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:06,800 I can't really help here. 373 00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:11,880 Otherwise, the question would again be to ask the support team. 374 00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:18,680 Well, you can of course set your goal in there and the conversion will be set in the second 375 00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:23,600 step when it's directly being achieved. 376 00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:31,160 It depends whether the fifth step is also being set as a conversion in your goal configuration. 377 00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:37,920 You can set it, set Matomo to make a conversion multiple times or to do it only once within 378 00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:38,920 a given visit. 379 00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:47,560 So that kind of things matter in your goal configuration, but as soon as someone moves 380 00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:54,680 across additional steps, it depends on whether certain steps are required or not to check 381 00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:59,080 whether the steps have been achieved and it really depends on your goal configuration 382 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:03,200 settings there. 383 00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:15,720 A question by Marcel that I think a lot of people are asking is they have a website and 384 00:36:15,720 --> 00:36:22,240 they want to collect the reader feedback, so feedback by the people visiting the website, 385 00:36:22,240 --> 00:36:26,560 something like how did the story make you feel? 386 00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:32,240 It makes sense to collect this data in Matomo to connect it to the other data and could 387 00:36:32,240 --> 00:36:38,360 this be realistically implemented on top of Matomo or with Matomo as a data store? 388 00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:44,880 Of course, you could program something like this rather easily yourself if you do the 389 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:51,200 user interface part yourself and then send the data, for example, as a custom event or 390 00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:58,840 something like this, but by chance, we have a talk tomorrow where Thomas Pearson is talking 391 00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:05,960 about a plugin they developed which does quite exactly this, which adds a feedback feature 392 00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,200 to a website using Matomo. 393 00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:13,000 So you might want to listen to this talk tomorrow. 394 00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:17,800 Yeah, I added the link within the chat. 395 00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:24,880 I think don't focus yourself on the form which is on the page link that I show you because 396 00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:31,160 I think that's in the link that you sent, you're like eight different buttons. 397 00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:38,040 I think that you can add with this plugin custom layout in order to have more than two 398 00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,440 buttons and to have eight like yours. 399 00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:45,320 The best thing is, yes, of course, to ask Thomas, but they work since probably two years 400 00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:46,320 on this plugin. 401 00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:48,520 So that's going to be a premium feature. 402 00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:53,000 So that's more the part where your hype go down, let's say. 403 00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:59,680 But it's always good to discuss with him to see, in fact, how they did it and the spirit 404 00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:00,680 behind. 405 00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:07,280 And I had the chance to assist to several conferences of demo that he made and it's 406 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:18,560 very impressive and great feature. 407 00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:25,680 Maybe in the meantime, also a more marketing related or user related question that I get 408 00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:33,680 a lot of times is now that there is Matomo tech manager, what are the differences between 409 00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:41,760 using Matomo the regular way and using Matomo tech manager? 410 00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:46,520 So I could say a few words about that. 411 00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:53,400 So basically or generally both things are working and will work in the future. 412 00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:59,640 So that's the important thing to know at first. 413 00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:07,200 But mostly also with bigger teams working on Matomo, also more than one analyst. 414 00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:14,980 And if you have more than one requirement collected for tracking capabilities and everything, 415 00:39:14,980 --> 00:39:20,040 the tech manager makes more sense than the legacy tracking code. 416 00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:28,440 The reason for that is probably if you want to extend your tracking concept and you want 417 00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:34,400 to have more tracking features, collect custom dimensions, events, and have some behavioral 418 00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,760 stuff included into the tracking code. 419 00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:44,320 For example, if it's just a simple thing like tracking clicks on a call to action button 420 00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:51,720 or some kind of other interaction stuff, you would always have to have a release cycle 421 00:39:51,720 --> 00:39:58,640 and close contact to the developer of the website to just give him the code and prepare 422 00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:00,160 everything. 423 00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:02,120 And he has to include it in the website. 424 00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:06,040 And then you have to release a new version of the website to include the new version 425 00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:07,580 of the tracking code. 426 00:40:07,580 --> 00:40:12,800 And then in worst case, you have made an error anywhere or you need more data. 427 00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:19,400 You have a stakeholder that called with a feature request in the last second and you 428 00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:25,400 didn't bring it into the current sprint or something like that. 429 00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:30,080 So it's quite a nightmare to maintain this kind of code. 430 00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:37,520 With a tech manager code, it's mostly or most of the things you can do within the tech manager 431 00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,880 configuration in the generic user interface. 432 00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:48,960 So this is not a free ticket for everyone to do everything with tags and release new 433 00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:52,960 container versions and stuff because you can't break the site with that. 434 00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:55,320 So there should be a workflow for that. 435 00:40:55,320 --> 00:41:00,920 But basically, it is your time to market for the tracking is much better than with the 436 00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:03,000 legacy code. 437 00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,280 And also the maintainability is much better. 438 00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:12,320 And you can feed information that you can't collect from the HTML directly. 439 00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:14,660 You can gather via the data layer. 440 00:41:14,660 --> 00:41:21,560 So that's the single point of connection between you and the developer or the CMS is the data 441 00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:23,120 layer. 442 00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:28,120 You have to ask the developer to pass over information that you can get from the HTML 443 00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:33,200 and then you can pass it over to the tech manager and process everything with it. 444 00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,840 So it makes things in life much easier here. 445 00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:42,200 I also just noticed if you're really interested in this topic, you might want to leave the 446 00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:48,320 session right now and go to the other livestream room because Thomas Persson is currently talking 447 00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:53,920 about TomoTag Manager and the basics of it. 448 00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:58,960 In addition, you have also everything in one place. 449 00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:05,560 Every tracking script, you know where the tracking script is implemented and so on. 450 00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:13,920 And if you do a relaunch, you don't have to make a list of all the tracking scripts in 451 00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:16,640 page path 500 and so on. 452 00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:24,680 And so you can only open the tech manager container and see which scripts you are using. 453 00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:32,200 Sometimes it's easier to troubleshoot everything with the development or debug view. 454 00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:40,200 And you have some templates, some you can fill in so you don't have to code something 455 00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:43,240 if you're not familiar with coding. 456 00:42:43,240 --> 00:42:51,320 And so you can use some templates to integrate some external services. 457 00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:58,080 And if you want to roll back, you have a version control and I think it's easier to roll back 458 00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:03,360 a tech manager version than a release version. 459 00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:12,240 So I think in time, you can easily roll back a version in tech manager and like to say, 460 00:43:12,240 --> 00:43:20,240 you have to go to the developer and say, okay, can you reverse please the last version? 461 00:43:20,240 --> 00:43:22,320 And so it's easier. 462 00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:29,880 And yeah, sometimes you can see you have also documented who changes what. 463 00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:33,360 But okay, in the development, you have this too. 464 00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:38,960 But there you have the user permission management in one place. 465 00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:45,160 And I think some of this are all very good features. 466 00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:54,120 And I think in mind, I would never integrate tracking scripts without a container without 467 00:43:54,120 --> 00:44:02,680 Matomo tech manager or something else, something some other tech managers. 468 00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:14,440 Hey, I think I have answered most of the questions. 469 00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:17,360 Of course, the Matomo camp doesn't end now. 470 00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:21,960 We still have a rest of the day and a full day tomorrow. 471 00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:28,600 And if you have any more questions, just feel free to ask them in the chat. 472 00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:29,960 People will still be here. 473 00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,160 People will still be able to answer. 474 00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:39,280 And maybe if you want to talk to other people, again, the advertisement in the breaks or 475 00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:47,960 maybe after the last talk today, you can go to meet.matomocamp.org and talk to other attendees 476 00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:49,640 of Matomo camp. 477 00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:51,360 Maybe some of us will be there. 478 00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:53,360 I'm not sure. 479 00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:57,200 Well, thank you very much for all the questions that you ask. 480 00:44:57,200 --> 00:45:03,120 And we hope that you are having a great Matomo camp. 481 00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:04,120 Thank you very much. 482 00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,120 Have a nice evening, guys. 483 00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:09,520 You too. 484 00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:37,520 Bye bye.