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• Piwik SSO options and why is it useful ?

  8 novembre 2017, par Piwik Core Team — Plugins

  Bored with typing again and again different logins and passwords for each service you have access to ? Would you like to add hundreds or thousands of users with different roles to your Piwik at once ? Would you like to save time and effort of managing your users while increasing the security in your business ? Guess what, Piwik has come up with great features to do just that.

  But what is a SSO ?

  Before introducing you to new Piwik features, let me explain what a SSO is.
  SSO is the acronym for Single Sign On. As its name suggests this authentication process allows a user to access multiple applications with one set of login credentials.

  Advantages of using a SSO are numerous :

  • improving security, for example when an employee is leaving your company, how can you check that all his credentials have been removed ?
  • reducing employees time-wasters such as having to enter logins/passwords each time.
  • providing a centralized database for administrators. They can then easily manage permissions of all employees saving them heaps of time.
  • reduces support costs related to authentication / accounts management.

  In order to provide SSO options, two Piwik plugins have been developed and are available on the marketplace :

  • SAML
  • LDAP

  SAML

  

  SAML stands for “Security Assertion Markup Language”, it is a standard in order to exchange authentication and authorization between an identity provider (OneLogin, Okta, Ping Identity, ADFS, Google, Salesforce, SharePoint…) and a service provider.
  An identity provider is an online service that authenticates users on the Internet by using security tokens.

  Are you wondering if your business or organization is using any of these providers ? We recommend to ask your operations team or sysadmin.

  At InnoCraft, we developed a plugin in order to allow SSO with SAML for Piwik. It can ensure consistent access control across the enterprise and external providers, potentially reducing support costs related to authentication and accounts management.

  The installation process is straightforward. All you need is to get the SAML premium feature from the marketplace. Once installed, you will access the SAML configuration interface through the admin where you can configure various settings :

  • SAML Status
  • Identity Provider (Entity ID, SSO endpoint info, Public x509 certificate)
  • Just-in-time provisioning and Mapping attributes
  • Access Synchronization
  • Advanced settings

  

  From there you will need to follow our detailed documentation to have it up and running :
  https://piwik.org/docs/login-saml/.
  Once finished, you will then be able to use SAML to authenticate to your Piwik account :

  

  As all premium features, SAML is eligible to a 30-day period money back guarantee, so do not hesitate to have it a try.

  LDAP

  

  LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. As its names implies LDAP is a directory, hosted on a server, which organizes the data about people in your company.
  Thanks to the LDAP plugin, Piwik can be connected to your LDAP infrastructure and then use all its power in order to give each individual an access with different rights according to their needs.

  Let’s say that you have 1,000 employees within a company and they all need right now an access to the analytics reports in Piwik with different roles. This is what LDAP can do.

  Moreover if your business or organization is already using LDAP, we recommend using the LDAP connector for Piwik for better security, to stop wasting time of your users and sysadmins, and to reduce the costs related to account management.

  You understood it well. LDAP is a plugin which saves a LOT of time within an organization. Here is a preview of the settings part :

  

  LDAP has been developed by the Piwik core team and is available as a Free plugin on the marketplace.

  Try it now within the marketplace

  If you are surprised by the possibilities that Piwik is offering in terms of plugins, the good news is that many other plugins are waiting for you on the marketplace. Check out our premium marketplace which offers state-of-the-art plugins to get the most out of Piwik.

  And if you are a developer feel free to create your own plugin, a detailed documentation is available at : https://developer.piwik.org/guides/getting-started-part-1.

• WebRTC predictions for 2016

  17 février 2016, par silvia

  I wrote these predictions in the first week of January and meant to publish them as encouragement to think about where WebRTC still needs some work. I’d like to be able to compare the state of WebRTC in the browser a year from now. Therefore, without further ado, here are my thoughts.

  WebRTC Browser support

  I’m quite optimistic when it comes to browser support for WebRTC. We have seen Edge bring in initial support last year and Apple looking to hire engineers to implement WebRTC. My prediction is that we will see the following developments in 2016 :

  • Edge will become interoperable with Chrome and Firefox, i.e. it will publish VP8/VP9 and H.264/H.265 support
  • Firefox of course continues to support both VP8/VP9 and H.264/H.265
  • Chrome will follow the spec and implement H.264/H.265 support (to add to their already existing VP8/VP9 support)
  • Safari will enter the WebRTC space but only with H.264/H.265 support

  Codec Observations

  With Edge and Safari entering the WebRTC space, there will be a larger focus on H.264/H.265. It will help with creating interoperability between the browsers.

  However, since there are so many flavours of H.264/H.265, I expect that when different browsers are used at different endpoints, we will get poor quality video calls because of having to negotiate a common denominator. Certainly, baseline will work interoperably, but better encoding quality and lower bandwidth will only be achieved if all endpoints use the same browser.

  Thus, we will get to the funny situation where we buy ourselves interoperability at the cost of video quality and bandwidth. I’d call that a “degree of interoperability” and not the best possible outcome.

  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that at this stage, Google is going to consider strongly to improve the case of VP8/VP9 by improving its bandwidth adaptability : I think they will buy themselves some SVC capability and make VP9 the best quality codec for live video conferencing. Thus, when Safari eventually follows the standard and also implements VP8/VP9 support, the interoperability win of H.264/H.265 will become only temporary overshadowed by a vastly better video quality when using VP9.

  The Enterprise Boundary

  Like all video conferencing technology, WebRTC is having a hard time dealing with the corporate boundary : firewalls and proxies get in the way of setting up video connections from within an enterprise to people outside.

  The telco world has come up with the concept of SBCs (session border controller). SBCs come packed with functionality to deal with security, signalling protocol translation, Quality of Service policing, regulatory requirements, statistics, billing, and even media service like transcoding.

  SBCs are a total overkill for a world where a large number of Web applications simply want to add a WebRTC feature – probably mostly to provide a video or audio customer support service, but it could be a live training session with call-in, or an interest group conference all.

  We cannot install a custom SBC solution for every WebRTC service provider in every enterprise. That’s like saying we need a custom Web proxy for every Web server. It doesn’t scale.

  Cloud services thrive on their ability to sell directly to an individual in an organisation on their credit card without that individual having to ask their IT department to put special rules in place. WebRTC will not make progress in the corporate environment unless this is fixed.

  We need a solution that allows all WebRTC services to get through an enterprise firewall and enterprise proxy. I think the WebRTC standards have done pretty well with firewalls and connecting to a TURN server on port 443 will do the trick most of the time. But enterprise proxies are the next frontier.

  What it takes is some kind of media packet forwarding service that sits on the firewall or in a proxy and allows WebRTC media packets through – maybe with some configuration that is necessary in the browsers or the Web app to add this service as another type of TURN server.

  I don’t have a full understanding of the problems involved, but I think such a solution is vital before WebRTC can go mainstream. I expect that this year we will see some clever people coming up with a solution for this and a new type of product will be born and rolled out to enterprises around the world.

  Summary

  So these are my predictions. In summary, they address the key areas where I think WebRTC still has to make progress : interoperability between browsers, video quality at low bitrates, and the enterprise boundary. I’m really curious to see where we stand with these a year from now.

  —

  It’s worth mentioning Philipp Hancke’s tweet reply to my post :

  https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-rtcweb-return/ … — we saw some clever people come up with a solution already. Now it needs to be implemented

  The post WebRTC predictions for 2016 first appeared on ginger’s thoughts.

• Why do you need analytics for your WordPress ?

  7 avril 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Analytics Tips, Plugins
  Not many people know this, but having a WordPress analytics tool gives you a competitive advantage. It’s also essential to the growth of your website. For many businesses, websites are the main driver of revenue and sales. In the case of blogs, it’s your first chance to make a lasting impression.

  Now, maybe you’ve heard of Google Analytics or even the privacy-friendly alternative, Matomo Analytics, but have never tried them ? These are analytics platforms that help you understand your website traffic and visitors. (You can find these platforms as plugins in the WordPress directory !)

  They’re important because the insights you get help you determine what changes to make to improve your website. Without them you could face a tougher time figuring out what’s working, what the issues are (and solving them before they get out of hand), and making sure you’re taking your website in the right direction. 

  WordPress analytics gives you an understanding of what’s actually going on.

  How does a WordPress analytics plugin benefit your website ?

  What this means for you is getting a toolkit to learn how to get more sales or followers and subscribers (aka conversions in analytics terms). 

  By getting insights into user behaviour, content performance, and how you can optimise your website, you can reach more of your goals, like increasing sales or growing your audience.

  A WordPress analytics tool helps you get more traffic to your site

  You get a range of features which tell you which acquisition channels are working for you like – social media, search engines, and other websites mentioning you. This helps you make an informed decision on where to focus energies (or spend) to get more of the ideal people coming through to your website. 

  

  Example : Looking through your acquisition channels and seeing that Reddit drives a lot of traffic through to your website. Since this channel seems to be working for you, you could then spend more time on Reddit posts to increase traffic.

  But getting more traffic isn’t all there is to it. Once they land on your site, you want them to stay for a little longer so they are intrigued by what you’re offering. Be it a product, or awesome content.

  Which leads us to …

  Increasing engagement by learning about visitor behaviour

  When you get a solid number of visitors on your website, it’s good to then learn about how they behave on your site. A WordPress analytics tool helps with engagement since you’re seeing what’s appealing to them, and what isn’t.

   Increasing engagement is good for a few reasons. 

  • You end up speaking the language of your readers. 
  • You can make a difference with the information you’re putting out. 
  • You get loyal customers and believers in your organisation. 

  With more engaged visitors, you can build trust with them and eventually be able to convince them that your product, service, or blog is needed in their lives.

  

  Example : Looking through entry and exit pages to see what first impression is making them stay, and what impression is making them leave. This helps you redirect efforts to give your website a better chance of getting visitors to stay longer.

  Improving your content and engagement can lead to more conversions

  After you get visitors engaged, it’s time to convert. 

  Whether you have an ecommerce site or freelance blog, you’ll need to know how to boost conversions. This simply means getting people to achieve more of the actions you’re wanting them to take on your site. Like subscribing to your newsletter or adding items to a cart.

  With conversion optimization features, you’re finding out how well your website is designed to get buyers through a journey to conversion. 

  

  Example : Say you’ve created a newsletter sign up page, but you’re not getting as many sign ups as you’d like. With a web analytics tool, you can look into it further. A funnels feature could tell you how they’re getting to that page. If people can’t find your page, that could be reason for low conversion rates. Or, maybe you are getting people landing on this page, but you can’t tell why they’re not signing up. Try setting up a heatmap to see how far they’re scrolling down your page to the sign up section. Through these conversion optimization features, you can make tweaks that significantly improve conversions.

  So, how does the Matomo Analytics for WordPress plugin help with all of this ?

  

  Matomo Analytics for WordPress is a free web analytics plugin that gives you access to all the features mentioned above, right in your own WordPress dashboard. It’s completely free to use and is handy for users of all skill levels. From beginners right through to advanced analysts. 

  You get to move through all the stages to increase traffic, increase engagement, and convert. By using Matomo for WordPress, you put yourself in a better position to track all the needed data from your WordPress website. 

  You have this toolkit to improve your website for free, with a few clicks ! 

  By getting useful insights like visitors, acquisitions, bounce rates etc. you gain a new perspective on how to improve your website so it’s better at doing what you created it to do. Getting these insights also means giving yourself the confidence to do what’s best for your website in a data-driven way. 

  With all this knowledge, you can be competitive, or grow enough that you’re leaving your competitors in the dust.