Roll Your Own Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#61

Post by mejakethomas » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

soared wrote: post #48

This is like a marketer suggesting an engineer roll his own security. If its a fun side project, do it! If you actually want it to work, don't do it. If you want to /really/ use it (checking more than sessions), don't do it.

Props for diving into such a hot topic though. This is a really big deal for companies of many sizes (probably _all_ sizes), and bringing creativity to this conversation is +1

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#62

Post by mejakethomas » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

mejakethomas wrote: post #55

(Data engineer here) Nice article! I did something very similar to this for my blog but used Snowplow's javascript tracker ( https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow-javascript-tracker ), a cloudfront distribution with s3 log forwarding, a couple lambda functions (with s3 "put" triggers), S3 as the post-processed storage layer, and AWS athena as the query layer. The system costs under $1 per month, is very scalable, and…

And also, huge props for the creativity! You hit a nerve here, and it's a topic being discussed at pretty much any/all companies.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#63

Post by eli » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

lostapathy wrote: post #59

fbelzile wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm okay with this. If a user agent is attempting to block my tracking code (piwik.js), it's likely that the user doesn't want to be tracked. Part of respecting user privacy is accepting the fact my tracking scripts will be blocked by most privacy extensions. I feel Matomo does privacy correctly. By default it continues to use the well known piwik.js filename that extensions block and also respects the DNT (do not tr…

> I'm okay with this. If a user agent is attempting to block my tracking code (piwik.js), it's likely that the user doesn't want to be tracked. What users DO want to be tracked????

I imagine it depends a lot on how you ask the question. How many people opt in to "share my crash data with Apple" ?

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#64

Post by mrskitch » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

amartya916 wrote: post #28

fbelzile wrote: post #24

Very cool. For those that want to de-Google-ify their website analytics in a more practical sense, consider using a self-hosted Matomo (formerly Piwik) instance: https://matomo.org/ I find it has 80% of the features GA has, it's GPL v3+ and only takes a few minutes to setup.

Depending on what kind of analytics you want, Fathom is quite nice too. I recently set it up on my servers (about a month ago) and its been working well. It’s open source as well, with a public Trello board that speaks to future dev goals. https://github.com/usefathom/fathom

I can attest to the quality of Fathom. I switched over browserless.io from Google Analytics to fathom. Been very nice.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#65

Post by fuddle » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

I'd like to do the same for a mobile app I'm building, but I find Firebase has a lot of features that would be hard to build out myself. i.e User Session length, install attribution

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#66

Post by rodionos » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

We removed all tracking scripts from the front-end framework we use (vuepress) and are only checking nginx logs with geoip and org extensions enabled. This is more than enough for us as we're in the non-consumer software business with a relatively low volume of page views by human visitors. We see the org, the country, the city, and the page flow. Good enough.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#67

Post by laythea » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

I hate all these user spying tools, whether home grown or bought in. Please, if you write software, don't do it.

Just let us buy the software and run it. Like in the good old days.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#68

Post by nathancahill » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

amartya916 wrote: post #28

fbelzile wrote: post #24

Very cool. For those that want to de-Google-ify their website analytics in a more practical sense, consider using a self-hosted Matomo (formerly Piwik) instance: https://matomo.org/ I find it has 80% of the features GA has, it's GPL v3+ and only takes a few minutes to setup.

Depending on what kind of analytics you want, Fathom is quite nice too. I recently set it up on my servers (about a month ago) and its been working well. It’s open source as well, with a public Trello board that speaks to future dev goals. https://github.com/usefathom/fathom

Fathom is quite nice. Very easy to deploy in Docker or Kubernetes too.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#69

Post by jimmaswell » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

laythea wrote: post #67

I hate all these user spying tools, whether home grown or bought in. Please, if you write software, don't do it. Just let us buy the software and run it. Like in the good old days.

I don't see anything wrong with keeping track of how users interact with your site in aggregate. It helps you improve it.

Re: Roll Your Own Analytics

#70

Post by pcmaffey » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

laythea wrote: post #67

I hate all these user spying tools, whether home grown or bought in. Please, if you write software, don't do it. Just let us buy the software and run it. Like in the good old days.

This is an important sentiment that I want to respond to. Because on one level, I absolutely agree. But the nature of the web is different. HTTP is not software that you "buy and run". It's a back and forth communication, request / response.

Analytics in this context is a kind of self-awareness. I'm not spying on you the user, I'm listening to our conversation, so that I can improve where I make mistakes, and help serve you, the customer/user/visitor better.

Now if I stick a cookie in your pocket that keeps listening after you've left, or I let 3rd parties listen in to our conversation, then absolutely, that's spying.