Install Open Web Analytics on Ubuntu 16.04 / 18.04 with Apache2 and MariaDB

Open Web Analytics (OWA) is an open source analytics platform built with PHP that you can use to track and analyze how people use your websites and applications….

It provides full website analytics for small and medium size businesses and webmasters who want know how their web pages are performing and how to improve them..

When you want to take full control of your own website analytics and data without using third party solutions, like Google Analytics, then OWA is a great place to start…

OWA also comes with built-in support for tracking websites made with popular content management frameworks such as WordPress and MediaWiki and comes with other features that may not be available with other analytics platforms..

This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install OWA on Ubuntu 16.04 / 18.04.

For more on OWA, please vist its home page

Step 1: Install Apache2 HTTP Server

Apache2 HTTP Server is the most popular web server in use… so install it, since OWA needs it.. To install Apache2 HTTP on Ubuntu server, run the commands below…

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2

After installing Apache2, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable Apache2 service to always start up with the server boots.

sudo systemctl stop apache2.service
sudo systemctl start apache2.service
sudo systemctl enable apache2.service

To test whether Apache2 is installed, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address… When you see that, then Apache2 is working as expected..

http://localhost

Step 2: Install MariaDB Database Server

MariaDB database server is a great place to start when looking at open source database servers to use with OWA… To install MariaDB run the commands below…

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots..

Run these on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

sudo systemctl stop mysql.service
sudo systemctl start mysql.service
sudo systemctl enable mysql.service

Run these on Ubuntu 17.10 and 18.04 LTS

sudo systemctl stop mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

After that, run the commands below to secure MariaDB server by creating a root password and disallowing remote root access.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.

Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
New password: Enter password
Re-enter new password: Repeat password
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y

Restart MariaDB server

To test if MariaDB is installed, type the commands below to logon to MariaDB server

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then type the password you created above to sign on… if successful, you should see MariaDB welcome message

Step 3: Install PHP 7.2 and Related Modules

PHP 7.2 may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories… in order to install it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.

Run the commands below to add the below third party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.2

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.2

sudo apt update

Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2 and related modules.

sudo apt install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-common php7.2-curl php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-mysql php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-cli

After installing PHP 7.2, run the commands below to open PHP default config file for Apache2…

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini

Then make the changes on the following lines below in the file and save. The value below are great settings to apply in your environments.

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
short_open_tag = On
memory_limit = 256M
upload_max_filesize = 100M
max_execution_time = 360
date.timezone = America/Chicago

After making the change above, save the file and close out.

Step 3: Restart Apache2

After installing PHP and related modules, all you have to do is restart Apache2 to reload PHP configurations…

To restart Apache2, run the commands below

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

To test PHP 7.2 settings with Apache2, create a phpinfo.php file in Apache2 root directory by running the commands below

sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

Then type the content below and save the file.

<?php phpinfo( ); ?>

Save the file.. then browse to your server hostname followed by /phpinfo.php

http://localhost/phpinfo.php

You should see PHP default test page…

Step 4: Create OWA Database

Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required for OWA to function, continue below to start configuring the servers. First run the commands below to create a blank OWA database.

To logon to MariaDB database server, run the commands below.

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then create a database called owadb

CREATE DATABASE owadb;

Create a database user called owauser with new password

CREATE USER 'owauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';

Then grant the user full access to the database.

GRANT ALL ON owadb.* TO 'owauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Finally, save your changes and exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 5: Download and Install OWA

Run the commands below to download OWA latest content.. At the time of this post, the latest version is 1.6.2.

cd /tmp 
wget https://github.com/padams/Open-Web-Analytics/archive/1.6.2.zip
unzip 1.6.2.zip
sudo mv Open-Web-Analytics-1.6.2 /var/www/html/owa

Next, run the commands below to change the root folder permissions…

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/owa/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/owa/

Step 6: Configure Apache2 OWA Site

Finally, configure Apache2 configuration file for OWA. This file will control how users access OWA content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called owa.conf

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/owa.conf

Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin admin@example.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/owa
     ServerName example.com

     <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>

Save the file and exit.

After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below

Step 7: Enable the OWA Site and Rewrite Module

After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below, then restart Apache2 server…

sudo a2ensite owa.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Next, open your brwoser and go to the URL.. and continue with the installation….

http://example.com/

Let’s Get Started… to begin the installation wizard…

On the next page, type in the database connection info and create an administrator account to manage the platform in the back-end… and continue

After entering the info above, click Next to create a superuser account to manage the platform..

You’ll then be given the tracking code to add to the website you want to track…

To track your web traffic with OWA you need to make sure some extra code is added to each of your web pages.

In most websites, blogs, CMS, etc. you can use a pre-made plugin to do the technical work for you. If no plugin exists you can edit your website templates and add this code to the </head> tag which is often defined in a ‘header.php‘, ‘header.tpl‘ or similar template file.