Machete vs Pagemetrics for Matomo

Machete is a simple suite of tools that solves common WordPress annoyances using as few resources as possible. Machete doesn’t cover every single use case, but there is a huge amount of sites that would require less plugins if they used Machete. All Machete tools have two things in common: they solve problems faced by many web developers and they do it using as few server resources as possible. So far, Machete includes the following tools: WordPress Optimization WordPress places a lot of code inside the tag just to keep backward compatibility or to enable optional features. You can disable most of it and save some time from each page request while making your installation safer. Cookies & GDPR Warning We know you hate cookie warning bars. Well, this is the least hateable cookie bar you’ll find. It is really light, doesn’t affect your PageSpeed score and plays well with static cache plugins. Analytics and custom code You don’t need a zillion plugins to perform easy tasks like inserting a verification meta tag (Google Search Console, Bing, Pinterest), a json-ld snippet or a custom stylesheet (Google Fonts, Print Styles, accessibility tweaks…). The Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager tracking codes are PageSpeed optimized, GPDR friendly. Maintenance mode The maintenance mode that ships with WordPress is just a basic lock-down that is activated whenever you do a major update. With machete Maintenance Mode you can hide your unfinished page from visitors and search engines, give your clients a secure temporary access and lock your site without affecting your SEO. Post & Page cloner Adds a “duplicate” link to post, page and most post types lists. Also adds “copy to new draft” function to the post editor. Social Sharing Buttons Social sharing done the Machete way. The icons are made as a custom webfont embedded in a minified CSS file that only weighs 5.8KB. The sharing actions use each platform’s native share URL. WooCommerce Utils WooCommerce was designed to work for every possible use case, but that often leads to unexpected behavior. These simple fixes can improve the WooCommerce user experience by making it behave as clients expect.

Pagemetrics for Matomo adds privacy-friendly, server-side analytics to WordPress by leveraging the pagemachine/matomo-tracking 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: Track page views on the server with full control over attributes such as title, URL and referrer. Optional download tracking rewrites file links and records the click before redirecting visitors. Optional AI assistant bot tracking detects crawls from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and others and forwards them to Matomo’s dedicated AI Assistants report. Multisite aware – network admins can define defaults, individual sites can override them. Respects Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control headers through the underlying library. Logs issues to the WordPress debug log when WP_DEBUG is enabled. Looking for expert help with Matomo or server-side tracking? Pagemachine offers consulting, implementation and ongoing support via our Pagemetrics solution. More info: Pagemetrics.eu Developer Hooks Page view tracking: pm_matomo_tracking_should_track_request — Return false to skip page view tracking for the current request. pm_matomo_tracking_visitor_ip — Override the visitor IP forwarded to Matomo as cip (defaults to REMOTE_ADDR; used for page views and downloads when an auth token is set). Return an empty string to skip IP forwarding. Download tracking: pm_matomo_tracking_should_rewrite_downloads — Return false to keep original download URLs for the current post. pm_matomo_tracking_is_download_url — Decide whether a specific URL should be rewritten (receives URL and default extension list). pm_matomo_tracking_download_extensions — Adjust the list of file extensions that count as downloads. pm_matomo_tracking_download_url — Customize the generated redirect URL used for download tracking. pm_matomo_tracking_download_redirect_status — Change the HTTP status code used when redirecting to the original file. AI assistant bot tracking: pm_matomo_tracking_ai_bot_user_agents — Extend or replace the list of User-Agent substrings used to detect AI bots. General: pm_matomo_tracking_log_message — Listen to debug messages emitted while WP_DEBUG is enabled. Example usages // 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 $substrings; }); // Behind a reverse proxy: forward the real client IP from X-Forwarded-For. add_filter('pm_matomo_tracking_visitor_ip', static function ($ip, $request) { $forwarded = $request->getHeaderLine('X-Forwarded-For'); if ($forwarded === '') { return $ip; } // Use the first (client) address in the list. return trim(explode(',', $forwarded)[0]); }, 10, 2); // Forward debug messages to the PHP error log while developing. add_action('pm_matomo_tracking_log_message', static function ($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);