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Ask HN: How do you track your blog traffic?
I'm about to publish my statically hosted dev blog and I am wondering what tracking solution I should use.
My first choice still would be Google Analytics, however, I don't like the idea of including Google spyware in my blog that much. Besides, many adblockers are blocking Google Analytics and most developers use an adblocker.
I would like to see how much traffic specific articles get and where the visitors come from.
What do you use for your blog?
- Tomte 7y agoI'd recommend web server log analysis with GoAccess or AWStats.
- Gehinnn 7y agoI don't have access to the server logs as I intend to use github pages for hosting...
- kgraves 7y agoAs much as I absolutely detest spying and surveillance capitalism, this is the _least_ invasive solution, but please remove or anonymize ALL IPs in your logs. Other than that I would not log, track or collect any requests from people.
- dredmorbius 7y agoKeeping IPs for a short time -- 24 hours to 7 days, say -- is useful for detecting and mitigating abuse. Though tools for automated throttling or simply front-ending behind a DDoS-capable CDN may be a preferred option.
- KhalPanda 7y agoI use, and quite like, Matomo (formerly Piwik). https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/
- Gehinnn 7y agoIt took a ton of time and a lot of troubleshooting to setup my own Matomo instance, but it's running now ;) Thanks for your input! However, I needed to rewrite some files so that adblockers don't block the tracking mechanism right away.
- dylz 7y agoThis seems a bit disrespectful considering how you don't like "spyware"
- lukaszkups 7y agoI'm using CloudFlare - I know it won't be so detailed as Google Analytics but I don't mind.
- mtmail 7y agohttps://github.com/usefathom/fathom https://github.com/usefathom/fathom We use the hosted version ($9/month, https://usefathom.com/ https://usefathom.com/)
- ArtWomb 7y agoCheck out Paul Jarvis' Fathom https://usefathom.com/ https://usefathom.com/ Best of luck and link up your blog when ready ;)
- bbno4 7y agohttps://simpleanalytics.com/ https://simpleanalytics.com/ is the best for privacy focused, cheap analytics :)
- AlchemistCamp 7y agoI use my logs and Keen.io (from the back-end). It's more accurate than an external service like GA. Even if a visitor's browser has JS disabled entirely, it still gets counted. I filter out certain kinds of visits (such as bots) from the dashboards I look at regularly. The only problem is that since Keen got acquired they've quietly stopped letting people sign up for their free plan and greatly increased the prices of their paid plans. It's probably only a matter of time before I lose access to my current plan and need to find an alternative.
- cloudytoday 7y agopersonal blog or for work?
- Gehinnn 7y agopersonal blog :)
- cloudytoday 7y agoyeah haven't tried that yet outside of using blog platforms like Blogger (yes I'm that old haha) or Medium so don't have additional analytics implemented
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ryacko 7y agoApache with Analog Analytics is good.
- clusmore 7y agoI rolled my own. I have an Azure function that I post the pathname and referrer to, and it then stores that in Table storage. It costs me between 1 and 2 cents per month.
- admils 7y agoApache with Analog Analytics is good.