Using the "tracker-proxy" script

General questions
1

I’m trying to get the “tracker-proxy” version of Piwik up and running. So far I’ve only had partial success. I’m running the latest version of Piwik (2.10.0) along with the latest version of the piwik proxy file. The sites I’m trying to track are part of a Wordpress multi-site installation. This all works perfectly with the Javascript tracker. I would have continued to use that except it leaves a terrible footprint.

The problem I’m having at the moment is that Piwik will track all clicks that originate as a direct site entry. However if I click through to a site from a search engine result link I end up with a 403 error showing in the visited sites CPanel log files and the click doesn’t register with piwik.

I’ve pasted below an example of a working link as captured by the CPanel log files along with a link that generates a 403 error within the CPanel log files.

This link works (when the site is visited directly) all domains shown are fictitious:

http://johnspaintcans.com/piwik.php?action_name=John%20Paint%20Can%20Lid%20-%20Paint%20Lid%20-%20John%20Paint%20Can%20Lid%20Sale&idsite=12&rec=1&r=085936&h=22&m=13&s=34&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnspaintcans.com%2F&_id=5296e3e35828d343&_idts=1423046856&_idvc=2&_idn=0&_refts=0&_viewts=1423046906&send_image=0&pdf=1&qt=1&realp=0&wma=1&dir=0&fla=1&java=1&gears=0&ag=0&cookie=1&res=1152x870

This link produces a 403 error in the log files (when the site is visited from a Google search engine link):

http://johnspaintcans.com/piwik.php?action_name=Paint%20Lid%20Terms%20%26%20Conditions%20-%20John%20Paint%20Can%20Lid%20Sale&idsite=12&rec=1&r=075655&h=22&m=14&s=13&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnspaintcans.com%2Fterms-conditions%2F&urlref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den%26source%3Dhp%26q%3Djohnspaintcans.com%26gbv%3D2%26oq%3Djohnspaintcans.com%26gs_l%3Dheirloom-hp.12..0i13j0i8i13i30l4.2096.2096.0.6308.1.1.0.0.0.0.297.297.2-1.1.0.msedr...0...1ac..34.heirloom-hp..0.1.296.M3LYuvNu3uo&_id=5296e3e35828d343&_idts=1423046856&_idvc=2&_idn=0&_refts=0&_viewts=1423046906&send_image=0&pdf=1&qt=1&realp=0&wma=1&dir=0&fla=1&java=1&gears=0&ag=0&cookie=1&res=1152x870

I look forward to any suggestions you might have.

2

hi there,

This link produces a 403 error in the log files (when the site is visited from a Google search engine link):

403 error sounds like a server misconfig. what is the actual error found in your error server log?

3

The 403 error doesn’t show in the error log files. It only shows in the Raw Access Logs as an entry shown below:

[10/Feb/2015:22:25:35 -0600] “GET /piwik.php?action_name=Paint%20Lid%20Terms%20%26%20Conditions%20-%20John%20Paint%20Can%20Lid%20Sale&idsite=4&rec=1&r=553926&h=15&m=25&s=30&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnspaintcans.com%2Fterms%2F&urlref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den%26source%3Dhp%26q%3Djohnspaintcans.com%2B%26gbv%3D2%26oq%3Djohnspaintcans.com%2B%26gs_l%3Dheirloom-hp.12…339.10728.0.12130.3.3.0.0.0.0.196.376.0j2.2.0.msedr…0…1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp…3.0.0.3B6ws2a2q1c&_id=edb3f2e21957d577&_idts=1423182103&_idvc=7&_idn=0&_refts=1423628731&_viewts=1423526832&_ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den%26source%3Dhp%26q%3Djohnspaintcans.com%2B%26gbv%3D2%26oq%3Djohnspaintcans.com%2B%26gs_l%3Dheirloom-hp.12…339.10728.0.12130.3.3.0.0.0.0.196.376.0j2.2.0.msedr…0…1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp…3.0.0.3B6ws2a2q1c&send_image=0&pdf=1&qt=1&realp=0&wma=1&dir=0&fla=1&java=1&gears=0&ag=0&cookie=1&res=1152x870 HTTP/1.1” 403 1 “http://johnspaintcans.com/terms/” “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_8) AppleWebKit/534.50.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.6 Safari/533.22.3”

Not sure where else to look,

4

Maybe you have some kind of “security module” on your server such as mod_security? see faq: How do I configure Piwik when mod_security (or CA SiteMinder) is enabled? - Analytics Platform - Matomo

5

OK, thanks for the tip. We’ll start there are see how things progress.