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Plausible is great, and I see the need for it, but I've always enjoyed using AWStats instead, as there is no need to add third party code to my site. It all hap

Plausible is great, and I see the need for it, but I've always enjoyed using AWStats instead, as there is no need to add third party code to my site. It all happens in the background and it paints a much better picture of your stats since users can't block the gathering of stats with an AD-Blocker.

rkagerer 6y ago
I've used AWStats for years. It's not perfect, but it's preferable to the scummy alternatives proffered by the big boys.
marvinblum 6y ago
That's one of the reasons I build Pirsch (https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/). All the JavaScript integrations can be blocked.
not_knuth 6y ago
How would you compare it to GoAcess [0]? I've only ever used GoAccess, but AWStats seems to be the older, more mature tool... so I would be curious about a comparison. [0] https://goaccess.io/ https://goaccess.io/
ukutaht 6y ago
Plausible developer here. Interesting you say that. There's no reason Plausible could not be used like AWStats. Parsing logs is just a different ingestion mechanism and we already provide self-hosting via Docker. On principle it wouldn't be too difficult to drain your logs into a Plausible instance or just run it on the same host along your web server. We ran a test last summer and found the stats from our JS-based tracker much much much more usable: https://plausible.io/blog/server-log-analysis https://plausible.io/blog/server-log-analysis So this is why we haven't put too much effort in log analysis. The stats we got from AWStats were mostly bot traffic with no good way to get rid of them. Have you run AWStats and Plausible side-by-side? Do you not have ~90% bots in your logs?
- alex0401 6y ago
  JS won't ever give you an accurate number (there's a growing army of people blocking JS & trackers). Logs will provide an accurate number, albeit you may not know if it's a 100% human.

rkagerer 6y ago

I've used AWStats for years. It's not perfect, but it's preferable to the scummy alternatives proffered by the big boys.

marvinblum 6y ago

That's one of the reasons I build Pirsch (https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/). All the JavaScript integrations can be blocked.

not_knuth 6y ago

How would you compare it to GoAcess [0]? I've only ever used GoAccess, but AWStats seems to be the older, more mature tool... so I would be curious about a comparison. [0] https://goaccess.io/ https://goaccess.io/

ukutaht 6y ago

Plausible developer here. Interesting you say that. There's no reason Plausible could not be used like AWStats. Parsing logs is just a different ingestion mechanism and we already provide self-hosting via Docker. On principle it wouldn't be too difficult to drain your logs into a Plausible instance or just run it on the same host along your web server. We ran a test last summer and found the stats from our JS-based tracker much much much more usable: https://plausible.io/blog/server-log-analysis https://plausible.io/blog/server-log-analysis So this is why we haven't put too much effort in log analysis. The stats we got from AWStats were mostly bot traffic with no good way to get rid of them. Have you run AWStats and Plausible side-by-side? Do you not have ~90% bots in your logs?

alex0401 6y ago
JS won't ever give you an accurate number (there's a growing army of people blocking JS & trackers). Logs will provide an accurate number, albeit you may not know if it's a 100% human.