Advice on what I should be looking at?

Google Analytics

I want to make the analytics myself not have to have to go to multiple admin pages.

Google analytics is really the way to go. If you want your own dashboard, you can use google analytics and then connect with the api to get data I believe.

If you're hellbent on rolling your own, which I advise against, you're going to have to write javascript on the frontend to track page loads, time on page, user ids and so on, and a backend service to receive all this data and store it appropriately.

I guarantee you it will be inefficient, slow, and not scalable when compared to google analytics.

Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!