Make Global list of Excluded IPs accept domains?

Feature Suggestions
1

Maybe it’s already the case. Sorry if it is.

My small problem is that in past 30 days or so my IP given to me by my ISP has changed two times. It usually dont change that often (i previously had one for six month). But when it does, i have no way of knowing it has changed and it pollute my stats when i go to my websites as i normally do.

Then, i go see them and discover that my visits got registered (sometimes also as local files on my hard drive, it depend on the site). So i change the excluded IP (there’s only mine), but i can’t remove my visits from the stats.

I know i could use cookies, but i frequently (or not) use many different browsers on more thant one computers or devices. And even if the cookies was permanent, browsers get rid of it for any weird unknown reason or it get invalidated somehow.

So for me a solution would be to use something like a DynDNS address and put it in the list of IP to be excluded. But Piwik doesn’t accept any domain name in it. I’ve try to put google domain in it for fun and it resulted in the following error message :

The IP to exclude "www.google.ca" does not have a valid IP format (eg. 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.*, or 1.2.3.4/5)

Would it be hard to do ? If it would be too hard to do, i can understand that you wouldn’t want to do this.
An alternative would be a small software on my computer to warn me on startup that my IP has change. But i couldn’t find any.

2

Lol.
I think i found something : IP Monitor download | SourceForge.net
Not sure of the proper way to use it yet.

3

I’ve answered this before… this is doable, but is a potential performance problem.

IIRC there’s an open ticket to investigate/implement a solution.

4

If it ever became reality, it could be interesting, but i wouldn’t had made the original post if i would have found the small software earlier. But it has not yet proven to be working as depicted by the autor (must wait for my IP to change, someday).

Anyway, maybe my post can give a working workaround to others. I’ve installed the service on my own computer but i could have set it on my Windows Home Server (but i shut it down when it’s not used).

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

5

I am also interested in excluding visits by hostname. I opened an own thread on November 21, 2012 before finding the thread here.
Now i did a more thorough search on the topic, and found a few more links.
So here i summarize what i found, to help bring this forward:

July 30, 2010
Piwik Feature Suggestions > Topic
Ignore dyn IP / DynDNS
First request for the idea.
Answers:
“use cookies” >> this is not an option, it is for excluding single clients only, and not the topic here.
“could be done, it might be a performance problem” >> not sure what the performance problem would be, read more at the end of this post.
“a dyn IP server could be integrated into piwik” >> interesting. but: Maybe a lot of work, and on many routers, you can’t set custom dyndns servers.

August 24, 2011
Piwik Feature Suggestions > Topic
IP exclusion : detection via DynDNS
Answers:
Same ones as above. I don’t understand all of vipsoft’s answers about reverse lookup, but i am no expert here anyways…

September 06, 2011
trac ticket #2645 new New feature
Exclude visits by hostname
seems user vipsoft opened this after posting in the thread started on aug. 24.
He outlined the steps to be taken.

December 22, 2011
Piwik Feature Suggestions > Topic
Make Global list of Excluded IPs accept domains ?
This is the thread where we are in now. I added this post here, because the title asks for what i think would be best…

February 08, 2012
How to and tutorials > Topic from
Dirty: Script to ignore Dynamic IP Adresses
this is a (dirty) solution to the problem. A shell-script you can run by cron, that will update the IP’s to exclude directly in the piwik-Database.
Something like this i imagine would be a nice quick solution. Just, a php-script that runs with piwik’s cron-system (not sure if it exists) would be easyer for many users.

November 21, 2012
Piwik Feature Suggestions > Topic
get IP for own traffic exclusion through dynamic DNS
my thoughts about the topic (sorry for posting before doing a good search), with a link to the same topic in the google analytics forum.

December 4, 2012
trac ticket #3589 new New feature
Admin: Global list of Excluded Host names
A user named kip expressed his wish for host-name exclusion via trac.
Seems the demand for such a feature is still alive…

So, there are some outlines towards an implementation, and even a dirty solution using a shell script.
Possible performance problems are mentioned several times. I am not sure, but i guess they only refer to direct use of ip lookup, without caching.
Or are there other problems?

can someone with piwik-development experience tell how much work this could be? or point to where to start? (is there a cron-system in piwik?) could someone be payed to do it?
who wants to donate? (i do).

How should it be done?
(allow hostnames in the excluded-IP list or have an excluded-hosts list?)
(exclude the hosts from tracking, or just from regular reporting?
(This also could be asked for excluded-IP’s, so it’s a bit off topic. The ability to do reports about your own usage can be helpful too. In context with Google Analytics i once read somewhere the advice to not exclude, but give a special segment to them, so you can exclude these users in the analysis, or you can include them, depending on your needs.))

I also linked the other topics here, to pull it all together.

6

You can contact us via: http://piwik.org/consulting/#contact-consultant for paid development (we could implement this for a fee and include it in piwik core)

7

So, i mailed with Maciej, and we agreed to try discuss here some details about a possible solution that could be included into core as plugin.

The question is, who needs which functionality exactly.

Do you need to exclude more than one domain/dynamic IP?
Do you need to do that only globally, or per defined website?
Do you need to exclude static IP’s at the same time, or could the plugin just replace the list of static IP’s with dynamic ones?
…

Also, if anyone has ideas on implementation, be it the technical approach, or the user interface.
And, if you are able and willing to pay for the development of the feature.

As for me, one domain/dynamic IP globally excluded is enough for my main need. I don’t need to exclude static IP’s.
But it would be nice to have a list for more than one domain, so i could exclude our main office’s ip plus some homeoffices too.
I am willing to (help) pay implementation.

Ideally from the user’s view i think, the current lists of IP’s to exclude (the global and the ones per website) would just accept domains too.
And, the traffic from there would not be excluded from tracking, just excluded from normal reporting, with the ability to analyze it separately.

After we get a good list of needs, someone with piwik dev-experience can estimate the amount of work needed.

Thomas

8

I currently have a DynDNS that was so i could make a small web server at home (now that my new ISP allow it), but my (A)DSL connnexion isn’t that great, i think i’ll let my DynDNS get erased soon.

I’m still using the little piece of software that watch my IP for changes, but it doesn’t seems to change often. So maybe i can say that no, i dont really need this feature anymore. But if anyone need it, i’ll show “moral support” for it. Unable to add monetary support for now. But if someone can, i think it’s great.

9

Do you need to exclude more than one domain/dynamic IP?

Possibly. I don’t personally right now, but others may need this.

Do you need to do that only globally, or per defined website?

Right now just globally, but others may need the latter as well.

Do you need to exclude static IP’s at the same time, or could the plugin just replace the list of static IP’s with dynamic ones?

I’d need both static IPs (as it is right now) as well as hostnames.

10

Ideally from the user’s view i think, the current lists of IP’s to exclude (the global and the ones per website) would just accept domains too.

yes I agree, that would be best

11

Has there been any development on this? I’d prefer to use my Dyn info. BUt also am happy to look into the cookie, but I can’t actually see how to implement that.

12

There’s now a plugin, called ExcludeByDDNS (currently in alpha, but it works).
It can be installed via the marketplace.
It’s homepage is