I have my personal blog, made with Hugo and hosted on GitHub pages. Initially I did not turn on any kind of web tracking / web analytics, because I do not like tracking at all. But I want to make my blog better and to achieve it, I need a feedback loop about traffic. For example, what are the most popular publications, or how many people view my blog from mobile devices, etc.
So, my question is, what is the most appropriate (ot the less evil) way to track a web traffic?
An answer “there is no good way to do it without breaking user’s privacy” is acceptable too, I did not decide yet turning on the analytics. Instead I’m interested in an opinion of the community.
Thanks in advance!
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I was using plausible for one of my projects and had a good experience.
Checkout goaccess. No additional tracking needed, it just reads your server logs. https://goaccess.io/
Think of it like people walking into a brick and mortar retail store and what they should be able to expect from an honest local business. For most of us, the sensitivities are when your “local store” is collecting data that is used for biased information, price fixing, and manipulation. I don’t think you’ll find anyone here that boycotts a store because they keep a count of how many customers walk in the front door.
How are you on self hosting something? You could give a couple of these a try. Data stays with you so you get to decide how much to track.
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#analytics
I use Ackee, it’s awesome!
https://ackee.electerious.com/
“Self-hosted, Node.js based analytics tool for those who care about privacy. Ackee runs on your own server, analyzes the traffic of your websites and provides useful statistics in a minimal interface.”
Tracking how many users you have and how many of them visit an article is hardly any breach of privacy compared to what ad companies retain.
Use an open source solution about analytics and minimise data collection if not absolutely necessary.
I think Matomo is the popular ethical Google analytics alternative IIRC
