Open Web Analytics is an open-source web analytics tool designed to track and analyze the activities of the visitors on your website. In this tutorial, we'll guide you through the installation process of OWA on Ubuntu Server.
Before installing OWA, make sure you have the following prerequisites:
Open Web Analytics requires PHP with some extensions installed on your system. To install these extensions, run the following command:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php php-curl php-gd php-mysql php-mbstring
Open Web Analytics stores its data in a MySQL database. To install MySQL server, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
Next, we need to create a database for Open Web Analytics. Log in to your MySQL server by running the following command:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter your MySQL root password when prompted. Then, create a new database by running the following command:
CREATE DATABASE owa_db;
You can replace owa_db with any name you prefer.
Create a new MySQL user and grant all privileges to the newly created database by running the following command:
CREATE USER 'owa_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON owa_db.* TO 'owa_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Replace owa_user with any username you prefer, and password with a secure password that you can remember.
Now that we have all the prerequisites in place, we can proceed to install Open Web Analytics. First, download the latest stable version from the official website:
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/Open-Web-Analytics/Open-Web-Analytics/releases/latest/download/owa.zip
Next, extract the downloaded archive to your web server document root. If you're using Apache2, run the following command:
sudo unzip owa.zip -d /var/www/html/
Or, if you're using Nginx, run:
sudo unzip owa.zip -d /usr/share/nginx/html/
Now that we have Open Web Analytics installed, we need to configure it to use the MySQL database we created earlier.
To do that, navigate to the directory where OWA is installed:
cd /var/www/html/owa
Or, if you used Nginx, run:
cd /usr/share/nginx/html/owa
Copy the sample configuration file to the necessary location:
cp includes/config.sample.php includes/config.php
Then, open the config.php file with your preferred text editor:
sudo nano includes/config.php
Locate the following lines:
$config["owa_db_host"] = "localhost";
$config["owa_db_user"] = "owa_user";
$config["owa_db_pass"] = "password";
$config["owa_db_name"] = "owa_db";
Replace owa_user and password with the MySQL username and password you created earlier. Then, replace owa_db with the name of the database you created. Save and close the file.
Finally, we need to configure our web server to serve Open Web Analytics.
If you're using Apache2, create a new virtual host configuration file:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/owa.conf
Then, paste the following configuration:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName your_domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/owa
<Directory /var/www/html/owa/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Replace your_domain.com with your domain name or server IP address. Then, save and close the file.
Next, enable the new virtual host:
sudo a2ensite owa.conf
And, restart Apache2:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
If you're using Nginx, create a new server block configuration file:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/owa.conf
Then, paste the following configuration:
server {
listen 80;
server_name your_domain.com;
root /usr/share/nginx/html/owa;
index index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
}
}
Replace your_domain.com with your domain name or server IP address. Then, save and close the file.
Next, enable the new server block:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/owa.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
And, restart Nginx:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Open your web browser and navigate to http://your_domain.com/owa (replace your_domain.com with your domain name or server IP address). You should see the Open Web Analytics dashboard, where you can start tracking the activity of your website visitors.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Open Web Analytics on your Ubuntu Server.
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