Microsoft Analytics

Intro:

Do you still want analytical data for your website but are looking for an alternative that isn't made by the corporation whose motto is "Do no evil"?  Why yes there is another option: Microsoft Analytics.  If you thought putting Google Analytics was a pretty simplistic endeavor to add some statistical info to your site you'll jump for joy how easy M$ made it.

Step by Step:

Step 1:  Download and install Application Insights Tools for Visual Studio.  It's a fairly straight-forward procedure you've done the bulk of your coding career.

Step 2:  Open your website project you want to add analysis data to.  For this venture I'm going to use Peter Hyde's blog chess project used back in the summer that was checked into the online version of TFS.

Step 3: right click on the project and around 1/3 of the way down you should see something like the following:

You should see a popup like the following:

Click the blue link that says "Add Application Insights to Project".  When you do that you should see a new folder within your project called ApplicationInsights.config.

Step 4: Run your project and do things within it!  I fired mine up and clicked the 2 buttons that exist within the project a few times.

Step 5:  If you right click on your project you'll now see an option for "Open Application Insights Portal...".  If you click that option soon after you did step #4 you'll find out the feed to M$ isn't as fast as you'd assumed it'd be.  Take 5-10 minutes and then go check again, you should see information in the Raw Event Stream like the following:

Gotta love M$ for having an app that links up to your visualstudio online account.

Enjoy!

Source:

Microsoft Analytics Info
Application Insight Tools Download