About site or app settings

Administration

Needed permissions: owner, manage, edit & publish or edit

You can change your data collection, privacy and reporting settings for any site or app at any time. In this article, we’ll walk you through these settings.

To change site or app settings, follow these steps:

Available from version 16.0.0. For versions below 16.0.0, see this section.

  1. Go to Menu > Administration.
  2. Navigate to Sites & apps.
  3. On the left, pick the site or app you want to set up.
  4. Navigate to Data collection.
    Site or app settings in Piwik PRO

    In Data collection, you can change the following settings:

    Basic info

    • Site or app address: Your site or app address. If you’re collecting data from a few domains with the same tracking code, add all addresses here.
    • Time zone: We’ll show data in reports in this time zone.
    • Currency: We’ll use this currency for goal revenue. 

    Page scrolling

    • Available from 16.17.0 Measure scroll depth: If turned on, you’ll monitor how far visitors are scrolling on your pages. Scroll data is sent as custom events. For reporting, you’ll need to set up a custom report. Note: If you’re tracking page scrolls with your own custom events, we recommend removing them, otherwise scroll events will be tracked twice.

    Internal search engine

    • Keywords from your internal search engine: To collect search data, add the parameters used by your search engine. You’ll see keywords and categories under Analytics > Reports > Internal search. Note: Some internal search engines don’t use parameters. In such cases, we can’t collect any search data.
    • Remove keyword parameters from page URLs: We’ll first collect keyword data from your internal search engine and then remove the parameters from links. 

    Page URLs

    • Remove parameters from page URLs: Removing parameters makes the URLs in your reports cleaner. However, if the parameters carry essential details — like keywords, referrers or campaign names — it’s better to leave them in. Note: The added parameters are case-sensitive.
    •  Keep anchors in page URLs: Keeping full URLs along with their anchors will help you analyze how visitors use anchor links on your site. Tip: Anchors help users get to a specific point on the page without scrolling. Example: #details is an anchor in this link example.com/pricing#details

    Campaigns

    • Campaign parameters: You can collect campaign data based on the listed parameters. Here you can change those parameters.
    • Start a new session when the campaign changes: When the campaign changes during a visitor’s session, we’ll start a new session. This way, you’ll collect data on all campaigns — both initial and new ones.

    Filters

    • Don’t collect data from these IP addresses: You can stop collecting data from added IP addresses. Use wildcards like 1.2.3.* or 1.2.*.* to deny traffic from a group of IP addresses
    • Don’t collect data from known crawlers: If turned on, we won’t collect data from known crawlers. We don’t collect any data from bots by default.
    • Add crawlers: We’ll block these crawlers along with known crawlers. Note: Enter a user agent name or a full user agent string to define crawlers. Separate with the enter or tab key. The crawler definition supports partial strings, but not wildcards or regular expressions.
    • Collect data only from known sites: You’ll only collect data from sites whose web addresses you’ve added in the ‘Site or app address’ section. This can protect your data against spam from unknown web addresses.

    SPA

    • Available from 16.19.0 Track page views in a single-page application: If turned on, we’ll capture every change in the browser’s history as a page view. Note: If you notice that a page view is recorded twice on a page load, turn on this setting: Tag Manager > Piwik PRO tag (tracking code) > Other options > Track page views manually. Tip: For more advanced setups, we recommend using our tracking libraries.

    Session limits

    • Available from 17.6.0 Max session duration: Max value: 12h 0m 0s.
    • Available from 17.6.0 Max events in a session: Min value: 1. Max value: 65535.
    • Available from 17.6.0 If session limits are exceeded: (1) Close the session and exlude the next matching events or (2) Create a new session. 

    Note: The session that goes over the limit is closed. The next matching events start a new session or are excluded and don’t reach the reporting engine.

    Other options

    • Delay loading the next page: When a visitor clicks a button or submits a form, we’ll introduce a brief delay. This ensures that all tags have enough time to activate on the following page.
    • Start a new session when the referrer changes: When the referrer changes during a visitor’s session, we’ll start a new session. This way, you’ll collect data on all referrers — both initial and changed ones.
  5. Navigate to Privacy.
    Ask visitor for consent in Piwik PRO

    In Privacy, you can change the following settings:

    Consent

    • Ask visitors for consent: If turned on, you’ll display a consent form on your site.
    • Collect anonymous data from non-consenting visitors: You can collect anonymous data from visitors who haven’t given their consent. Their IP addresses will be completely masked. You will not recognize new and returning visitors. And you will only know their country. It’s up to you to decide whether to use a session hash and visitor cookies for these visitors or not.
    • Use a session hash: If you use a session hash, it’ll be created for each session based on the visitor’s IP address, operating system, browser name, browser version, browser language, enabled browser plugins and site/app ID. This hash will help us recognize events that belong to the same session. Note: This setting only applies to non-consenting visitors.
    • Use visitor cookies: If you use visitor cookies (_pk_id and _pk_ses), we’ll use them to recognize events that belong to the same session. They will expire 30 minutes after the last event. Note: This setting only applies to non-consenting visitors.

    Note: Some triggers in Tag Manager create cookies to function correctly. If you use one of the following conditions in triggers, we’ll set a cookie:

    • Event condition > Traffic source
    • Event condition > Returning visitor
    • Event condition > Campaign
    • Event condition > External referrer 
    • Multiplicity > Fire tag once per session
    • Multiplicity > Fire tag multiple times per session, excluding first
    • Multiplicity > Fire tag once per page view

    Make sure that tags with those triggers are set with the right consent type. 

    We also set essential cookies that store visitor’s consent decision. More about cookies

    • Ask for consent in countries under the GDPR and UK GDPR: If turned on, we’ll show the form only to visitors from countries under the GDPR and UK GDPR. We’ll use visitors’ IP addresses to recognize countries.
    • Consent is valid for: The cookie storing consent preferences will expire after this time, and your form will ask a visitor for consent again.
    • Share consent between subdomains: You can add subdomains to share consent between them. Enter a full URL or use a wildcard like *.example.com.

    Note: If you enter a few values, each will create a bucket of shared consent. Let’s look at an example.

    We have the following domains:

    • example.com
    • blog.example.com
    • help.example.com

    We only want to share consent between the first two: example.com and blog.example.com. So we need to type in: *.example and help.example.com. 

    This will create two buckets of shared consents:

    • One bucket for: example.com and blog.example.com.
    • And another bucket for: help.example.com.
    • Use a custom consent form: This consent form overrides those from Consent Manager. You can add it via the JavaScript API. Read more

    Compliances

    • Use a session hash: If you use a session hash, it’ll be created for each session based on the visitor’s IP address, operating system, browser name, browser version, browser language, enabled browser plugins and site/app ID. This hash will help us recognize events that belong to the same session. Note: This setting applies to consenting visitors, or to all visitors if you don’t ask for consent. Read more
    • Use visitor cookies: If you use visitor cookies (_pk_id and _pk_ses), we’ll use them to recognize new and returning visitors, as well as recognize events that belong to the same session. Note: This setting applies to consenting visitors, or to all visitors if you don’t ask for consent. Read more

    Note: If you turn off both visitor cookies and session hashes, each event will be treated as a new session and you won’t recognize visitors.

    • Comply with CNIL guidelines: If turned on, we’ll hide the session log report (Analytics > Reports > Session log) and the tracker debugger (Analytics > Settings > Tracker debugger). We’ll also show a warning message when a user tries to create API keys. The session log report will also be hidden on meta sites/apps that contain a site with this setting turned on. Read more
    • Available from 16.11.0 Don’t collect visitor’s device data: If turned on, you won’t read screen resolution and browser plugins from a visitor’s device without consent. Accessing visitor’s device is not compliant with the German Data Protection Act (TDDDG) and similar privacy laws.

    IP addresses

    • Available from 17.6.0 Collect visitors’ IP addresses: When you collect visitors’ IP addresses, you can know their location, like their country or city. But if you decide to turn off this feature, you won’t have access to such data. Also, a session hash that relies on IP addresses will be less accurate.
    • Mask IP addresses: If turned on, we’ll remove the selected number of bytes from the address before saving it to the database. Nobody will ever see the full address. IP masking helps keep visitor data private.
    • Collect from unmasked IP addresses (All location data, City, Region, or Continent): We’ll take this data from unmasked IP addresses before we mask them. You’ll always see masked IP addresses in reports.
  6. Navigate to Reports.
    Reports (Administration)

    In Reports, you can change the following settings:

    • Show ecommerce reports: If turned on, you’ll see these reports under Analytics > Ecommerce. Before you collect any ecommerce data, you need to set up tracking. Read more
    • Show SharePoint reports: If turned on, you’ll see these reports under Analytics > SharePoint. Before you collect any SharePoint data, you need to set up the integration. Read more

Settings in versions below 16.0.0

Here’s a list of site or app settings for versions below 16.0.0. You can find these settings by going to Administration > Websites & apps.

  • URL: Your site or app address. If you’re collecting data from a few domains with the same tracking code, add all addresses here.
  • Time zone: We’ll show data in reports in this time zone.
  • Currency: We’ll use this currency for goal revenue.
  • Page redirect delay: A millisecond delay before a page is redirected to another page after a visitor clicks on a button or submits a from. Used to give tags time to fire.
  • Ask visitors for consent:
    • If turned on, you’ll display a consent form on your site. You can edit the form by going to Consent Manager. In this mode, you can set other options for collecting data. Read more
    • If turned off, you’ll collect data without consent. In this mode, you can turn on or off two options: use cookies and use device fingerprinting.
  • Comply with CNIL guidelines: When turned on, we’ll hide the session log report (Analytics > Reports > Session log) and tracker debugger (Analytics > Settings > Tracker debugger). We’ll also show a warning message when a user tries to create API keys. Read more about CNIL guidelines.
  • Whitelist page URLs: When enabled, the tracker will block tracking request sent from different domains than added to: General settings > URLs. Use this option to protect your reporting from spam. Note: Before enabling this option, add all domains you want to track to General settings> URLs. Otherwise, data from domains that you have not added will not be collected.
  • Keep page URL fragments when tracking: Let’s you keep URLs with fragments like #bottom. When turned off, the URL will look like this clearbank.com instead of clearbank.com#bottom.
  • Internal search engine tracking: Allows to track queries that people type in the search engine on your website. You might need to add query parameters to the list to make it work properly.
  • Ecommerce tracking: Allows to track ecommerce data and show it in reports.
  • Exclude IP addresses: Lets you exclude tracking data from a given IP address, for example the IP in your office. To exclude, you can use the wildcard, for example 54.217.*.* or 54.217.240.*.
  • Exclude URL parameters: Lets you exclude parameters from the URL, making your reports look cleaner. For example, instead of the URL that looks like this clearbank.com/?_stg_debug you’ll see the URL that looks like this clearbank.com. Note: Regex (regular expression) is supported. The added parameters are case-insensitive.
  • Exclude browsers: Lets you add the user-agent string used by the browser that you want to exclude from tracking.

Note: To change the way your data is collected, you can use the following settings:

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