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Howdy,
Well, first off, I don't use Google Analytics (or the Virtualmin module), so I could be mistaken here.
But my understanding of what the plugin does, is that it's here to make the lives of your users easier.
I believe everything the plugin does, could be done manually by the author of the website if they understood what needed to be done to activate Google Analytics.
So the answer to your question then is two part:
1. I don't see any reason why you couldn't use woopra outside of Webmin, if you were to just manually add the needed scripts into your HTML
2. Having a woopra Webmin/Virtualmin module could make life easier on your users, so if you or anyone else were interested in creating one, go for it!
But again, I don't think it's necessary, just a nicety :-)
-Eric
Yes, it's actually an unfortunate accident that the module is named Virtualmin Google Analytics, as it now supports a few others. All it does is inject the code (whatever code that might be...usually a JavaScript bug with a variable in it for the user key or something). Adding new ones is usually dead simple.
Since we don't have an account, and it appears they've closed their beta, we can't add it for you. But, if you look at the module directory, you can probably pretty quickly figure out what needs to be done to add a new one (it, unfortunately hasn't yet been refactored into a module type system...but will be eventually).
Most of the work is in Virtualmin/GoogleAnalytics.pm, but you also need to add a bit in virtualmin-google-analytics-lib.pl. It will take a bit of reading.
Or, if you can wait until Woopra comes out of beta, or opens up invites again so we can get an account, we'll add it. It looks like a cool product.
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Hmmm...OK, so I guess only some aspects are closed beta. I was able to get an account for testing. We'll add support in 3.70 (3.69 has already branched for release in the next day or so, so no more features can go in).
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Thanks for the feedback.
I didn't know that the Webmin Analytics plugin actually inserts the GA script if one does not add it manually to the html pages, is this correct? Where does the plugin actually get the code for the script? Can you tell me more about the plugin like the file name? What is it written in?
I did add the GA script to all of my html pages and it seems to be working fine because the plugin in of itself did not seem to function if it is supposed to append the script. If all it does is add the account number then hard coding it in the script itself would bypass the plugin.
I am going to add the woopra script manually to my html pages and see if it works.
Oh! Reading back over all of this, I see that we're talking past one another. We should have started by explaining what the Virtualmin Google Analytics plugin does. ;-)
Most importantly, perhaps: You do not <i>need</i> the plugin to use Google Analytics (or any other analytics product) on your site. Virtualmin certainly doesn't prevent you from putting things into your own website! That would be crazy.
What the plugin does do, given the right environment (mod_perl2 being loaded into Apache, mainly), is automatically add whatever JavaScript bugs and such you need for the various analytics tools it supports. It adds them to pretty much anything...so if you have a blog and a wiki and a static web page all on the same domain, you don't have to add the JavaScript bug to all three places...just turn it on in Virtualmin, and they'll all have analytics. It is not mandatory that you use the plugin to use any analytics service. We use it on some of our sites and we do it manually on others. No big deal.
<div class='quote'>Can you tell me more about the plugin like the file name? What is it written in?</div>
It lives in virtualmin-google-analytics. Like all of Webmin and Virtualmin, it is written in Perl. But, it's pretty basic stuff, so if you're comfortable with any scripting language (like PHP, Ruby, Python, etc.) it should be pretty easy to duplicate and modify the relevant sections of code. When it becomes modular, it'll be a bit simpler (each analytics type will live in one file of its own).
But, again, you don't need the plugin to use analytics tools. It's just for convenience. And, in some cases (like cases where you don't want mod_perl2 in your Apache), it might not be preferred.
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Oh, one other case where it is not useful is when you are using mod_deflate or mod_gzip or any of the compressing forms of PHP. The module no longer has access to the plain HTML as it is outgoing, and so cannot inject the JavaScript bug.
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