I managed to get Urchin 6 installed on my machine. The MySQL database needs to exist before you run the installation. Providing an account with enough privileges to create the database is not enough. I have now run into another problem with the Slave Scheduler service, which refuses to start. The Urchin team are aware of this problem as it has been reported by several beta testers but are currently unable to replicate the problem.
Archive for the ‘Analytics’ Category
Google look set to (finally) release Urchin 6
Thursday, November 15th, 2007About 2 years ago I was asked to review the available analytics tools and propose one to purchase for use with a web based application. At the time I looked into the free options (like AWStats), the mid-range options (like Urchin), and the damn expensive options (like WebTrends). As cost was an issue but so was customisation I proposed Urchin, which combined impressive reports with what seemed like enough flexibility to be customised for our needs.
Something else Urchin had going for it was the (then) recent purchase by Google. I saw this as promising for future releases, and almost immediately Google introduced Google Analytics - a free version of Urchin where the statistics are gathered by javascript and hosted by Google.
My boss went ahead and purchased the base Urchin license and over the following few weeks I taught myself how to customise the reports to suit our needs. Ultimately we decided that we would produce our own log format (previously we were using Apache logs) and Urchin was also very well suited for these needs - this is just one of the reasons we needed Urchin Software over the Google Analytics approach. Learning how to configure Urchin wasn’t always easy, and the help text is fairly limited - Google seem to have adopted a model that’s growing in popularity where you can purchase support and also the expertise often needed for custom solutions.
Anyway all was going well, however while Google have been regularly improving their free online solution the software version (still called Urchin) was going stale. The improved flash reports in Google Analytics were showing up the dated SVG reports in Urchin, and several of the cool new reports were just not available.
Finally this looks like it’s about to change, with Google releasing a beta version of Urchin 6. They’ve simplified the cost structure (meaning it’s more expensive for anyone wanting the basics, but cheaper for anyone wanting all the extra modules such as load balancing, funnels, etc) but apart from that I’m yet to find out what’s changed. I have managed to get hold of the beta but it’s currently not installing - there seems to be an issue with MySQL that I can probably solve myself.
I will be sure to report my findings here once I manage to get it working!
Google add subscriber stats to Webmaster Tools
Saturday, September 15th, 2007The already excellent Google Webmaster Tools just added a great new feature - they have added stats for your web feeds subscribed to by users of Google Reader, iGoogle, and Orkut! The reason this is so cool is that Google Analytics isn’t always a true representation of the total number of people reading your site as anyone using the web feed doesn’t actually hit any of the pages and therefore isn’t tracked. So by looking at the statistics for TheDayToday I can see that I currently have 3 Google Subscribers! It’s been a while since Google have impressed me with a new feature but this simple thing has made my day!