Pagemachine

Mauricio Altamirano

Pagemetrics for Matomo adds privacy-friendly, server-side analytics to WordPress by 
leveraging the <code>pagemachine/matomo-tracking</code> PHP library. When enabled, the 
plugin sends page view and optional download events from your WordPress site 
directly to a Matomo instance without loading Matomo’s JavaScript tracker.
Key benefits:
<ul>
<li>Track page views on the server with full control over attributes such as title, URL and referrer.</li>
<li>Optional download tracking rewrites file links and records the click before redirecting visitors.</li>
<li>Optional AI assistant bot tracking detects crawls from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and others and forwards them to Matomo’s dedicated AI Assistants report.</li>
<li>Multisite aware – network admins can define defaults, individual sites can override them.</li>
<li>Respects Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control headers through the underlying library.</li>
<li>Logs issues to the WordPress debug log when <code>WP_DEBUG</code> is enabled.</li>
</ul>
Looking for expert help with Matomo or server-side tracking? Pagemachine offers 
consulting, implementation and ongoing support via our Pagemetrics solution. 
More info: <a href="https://pagemetrics.eu/" rel="nofollow ugc">Pagemetrics.eu</a>
<h3>Developer Hooks</h3>
Page view tracking:
<ul>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_should_track_request</code> — Return <code>false</code> to skip page view tracking for the current request.</li>
</ul>
Download tracking:
<ul>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_should_rewrite_downloads</code> — Return <code>false</code> to keep original download URLs for the current post.</li>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_is_download_url</code> — Decide whether a specific URL should be rewritten (receives URL and default extension list).</li>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_download_extensions</code> — Adjust the list of file extensions that count as downloads.</li>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_download_url</code> — Customize the generated redirect URL used for download tracking.</li>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_download_redirect_status</code> — Change the HTTP status code used when redirecting to the original file.</li>
</ul>
AI assistant bot tracking:
<ul>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_ai_bot_user_agents</code> — Extend or replace the list of User-Agent substrings used to detect AI bots.</li>
</ul>
General:
<ul>
<li><code>pm_matomo_tracking_log_message</code> — Listen to debug messages emitted while <code>WP_DEBUG</code> is enabled.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Example usages</h3>
<pre><code>// Skip tracking for administrators.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_should_track_request', static function ($shouldTrack) {
 return current_user_can('manage_options') ? false : $shouldTrack;
});

// Keep original download URLs on the privacy policy page.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_should_rewrite_downloads', static function ($shouldRewrite) {
 return is_page('privacy-policy') ? false : $shouldRewrite;
});

// Force CDN assets to be treated as downloads.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_is_download_url', static function ($decision, $url) {
 return str_contains($url, 'cdn.example.com/assets/') ? true : $decision;
}, 10, 2);

// Add extra file types to download tracking.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_download_extensions', static function ($extensions) {
 $extensions = array_merge($extensions, ['svg', 'heic']);
 return array_unique($extensions);
});

// Append a checksum to rewritten download URLs.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_download_url', static function ($trackingUrl, $target, $label) {
 $checksum = substr(hash('sha256', $target . $label), 0, 12);
 return add_query_arg('pm_checksum', $checksum, $trackingUrl);
}, 10, 3);

// Use a 307 redirect instead of the default 302.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_download_redirect_status', static function () {
 return 307;
});

// Add a custom bot to AI assistant tracking.
add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_ai_bot_user_agents', static function (array $substrings): array {
 $substrings[] = 'MyCustomBot';
 return $substrings;
});

// Forward debug messages to the PHP error log while developing.
add_action('pm_matomo_tracking_log_message', static function ($level, $message) {
 if (!defined('WP_DEBUG') || WP_DEBUG !== true) {
 return;
 }

 // phpcs:ignore WordPress.PHP.DevelopmentFunctions.error_log_error_log
 error_log(sprintf('[Pagemetrics for Matomo][%s] %s', strtoupper((string) $level), $message));
}, 10, 2);
</code></pre>

Pagemetrics for Matomo

Pagemetrics for Matomo adds server-side, privacy-friendly analytics to WordPress. It tracks page views, downloads, and AI assistant bot crawls without …

Epsiloncool

Whenever you plan to begin developing applications on WordPress using AJAX technology, you have to solve a number of 
minor issues unrelated to the logic of your application:
<ul>
<li>How to package and transmit data from the browser to the server, so they will not have been distorted?</li>
<li>How to transfer data, if they are multi-dimensional array?</li>
<li>How to implement a custom processing of AJAX response in case, again, it represents a complex set of data (a typical 
example – form sending and on-server validation)?</li>
<li>How to handle data transition errors?</li>
<li>How to debug all this stuff?</li>
</ul>
Usually these issues generates a lot of spaghetti code, moreover, each new request type requires some customization of 
code. Managing all of this, you forget about the function that you would like to implement.
AJAX Manufactory plugin for WordPress have most of these tasks already solved. You can think about functionality and 
business logic instead.
What you can have from the box:
<ul>
<li>A simple function at the client side which allows to send any your complex data from javascript to WordPress server 
side.</li>
<li>An AJAX response wrapper at the server side which gives to you sent data as PHP array and allows you to create 
an AJAX response as a set of simple “commands” like “make an alert”, “set up javascript variable”, “put html text to 
specific html node(s)”, “execute a javascript function”, “go to specific URL” etc.</li>
<li>Automatic execution of “commands” queue at the client side. Additionally you can specify your own callback.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Documentation</h4>
Please refer <a href="http://e-wm.org/ajax-manufactory/#documentation" title="AJAX Manufactory Documentation" rel="nofollow ugc">Documentation</a>.

AJAX Manufactory

Putting "interface part" out of your mind, you can always concentrate on the logic itself. It is increasing programming productivity and lower human errors.



This methodology is good

This plugin allows you to create AJAX applications by simple way. It implements JSON data transfer, data escaping, error handling.

Pagemetrics for Matomo vs AJAX Manufactory