4Analytics initial setup

Initial configuration wizard and just getting started

After you installed 4Analytics for the first time, you can click the link to go to the component admin page.

This brings up the initial configuration wizard:

With 4Analytics, you don't have to copy/paste obscure code into your index.php file, or in some template configuration field. Measurement is done with simple rules and 4Analytics comes with a default rule:

The default rules measures traffic for all pages on the site, automatically excluding any logged-in visitor

This is the most common use case, so if this is suits your need, click the Enable default configuration button, and you are already done configuring 4Analytics:

4Analytics has started measuring traffic, and you can continue to its dashboard to view reports.

4Analytics also automatically and by default exclude all known spam robots it knows (several thousands) from measurements, you don't have to worry about that.

Detailed configuration

If you prefer a more customized configuration, 4Analytics has many options for you, although they come with default values that are safe to use for as long as you need to.

What next?

After you enabled the default rule, 4Analytics starts measuring traffic on the site immediately. It displays reports in the Joomla 4Analytics component page, grouped under Summary, Visitors, Sources and Content.

These reports are updated quickly and automatically, with various selectors to let you view what you are looking for. All details on the Reporting page.

While you can just let 4Analytics do its job, measure things and display reports, we'd want to encourage you to look at the following features next:

Automatic emailed summaries

4Analytics can send daily, weekly or monthly summaries to a list of email addresses you enter under Configuration | Reporting. These emails can include links to online reports.

With these full reports links, your users don't need to log in to check out the traffic reports, they only need the links. For privacy, these links expire 30 days after they have been created.

Measurement rules

You are using the default measurement rule (all pages, exclude logged-in users) but you can add as many rules as you need. E-commerce website may want to measure as well traffic from logged-in visitor for instance.

This is all under Configuration | Measuring.

If you are visiting your site frontend as a guest (non-logged-in visitor), it's probably a good idea to exclude your own IP address from measurements by modifying the default measurement rule.

If you are logged-in usually, then the default rule already exclude logged-in users, so you don't have to do anything.