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Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

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Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#51

Post by avian »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #26

For those of you hosting on your own server, this is a PSA that awstats is still working. It reads server logs and makes little graphs via a cron job. It's fun to have analytics going back to 2002 in the same format. https://awstats.sourceforge.io/

Yes, I've also been using awstats for many years. It definitely works for a small site, has a lot of useful features and occasional releases still keep up with new user agents, etc. that pop up over time. Each time I want to switch I fail to find a suitable replacement.

That said, behind the curtain, awstats has plenty of problems and shows its age. Most of it is a single ~20 kline script with hundreds of global variables, so it's very challenging to debug. There are no tests. Over time it also had plenty of security issues [1]. I wouldn't recommend running it in any other mode than for generating static HTML reports from an unprivileged cronjob.

I've made my own test suite and I'm using a slightly patched version with ~20 commits on top of the latest release that fix problems I found and that upstream didn't merge (still from the times of SourceForge - since they switched to GitHub they do seem to be a bit better in accepting pull requests). However it doesn't help with submitting patches that, for example, concerns regarding GDPR compliance are met with responses like [2].

[1] https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/a...

[2] https://github.com/eldy/awstats/issues/110

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#52

Post by manigandham »

thinkingemote wrote: post #49
foota wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?? Because a cloud company using data like that would be corporate suicide?

"if you are not a fan of big brother"..... "That would be corporate suicide" Yes sometimes protecting personal privacy might be opposed to a corporations profits. The horror of it!

You’re mixing things up. A corporation is not opposed to corporate profits, and in this case they make profits by safely, securely, and privately storing your data as requested.

Not doing so would be a major hit to their business. Whether you trust their reputation and compliance certifications is up to you, but a completely different issue.

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#53

Post by luckylion »

busymom0 wrote: post #42
luckylion wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it probably hasn't happened. Yet, that is. It might next year, and we might have a whistle blower then.

I agree with that. Something like that could happen. Question is, how do we stop it? This reminds me of when Facebook owned Parse dot com and a lot of developers used parse for storing user data. Given Facebook's track record with privacy, I won't be surprised if they used it.

My personal stance it to just make it harder. Encrypt the data, use your own server so there's less metadata. Of course, even then, if the data center company really wanted to and really was happy to break the law and really went deep into the attack, they could probably find a way to get to the data. But it's much harder, much more illegal and even they will certainly think longer before doing that vs "just copy the data and don't tell anyone" if it's in plain text on their machine.

It's more work to do it this way and forsake the convenience provided by Amazon & Co, but I prefer it. Plus I learn lots of things while doing it which I would've outsourced otherwise.

There's also the problem that Amazon might stay 100% truthful and trustworthy and never access my data. But their employees might not. The NSA's surveillance data was misused by employees to stalk romantic interests, so there's no reason to believe that an Amazon employee couldn't wrongfully do the same. They might be fired for it, but the damage is done, privacy has been compromised.

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#54

Post by cknoxrun »

nnx wrote: post #16

Has anyone done research whether stopping using Google Analytics impacts Google Search rankings?

I struggle with this one. We have been on the Google roller coaster a few times now, where for no apparent reason our traffic goes up or down wildly. From this I have developed a (likely) irrational fear that messing with things by removing google analytics, or even adding a competitor on like Hotjar, will put us back on the roller coaster.

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#55

Post by johnchristopher »

speedplane wrote: post #38
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #37

making your own beacon based tracking system is pretty simple, and then you have the screen sizes, time on page metrics etc.

The real power of Google Analytics is not in the tracking code, it's with the front-end interface that any non-technical product manager or marketer can use. Tracking users is easy. Allowing non-technical folks with easy-to-use analysis tools is much harder.

The ever changing google analytics dashboard is not that easy to use for non technical folks.

And then there's the whole "data analysis" thing.

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#56

Post by stevenicr »

I used to spend a lot of time looking at logs and trying to make pages better and more content based upon the stats. Then google stopped giving keywords and searched-phrases - I've since found stats of little use most of the time.

I wish google would make search-keyword-hiding opt-in for users, and perhaps auto-opted-in if using incognito mode. I am sure most of my visitors would be glad to provide the search phrases knowing that it helps us make more thing and things better. But google does not let them opt in to sharing them, they are all basically opted out.

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#57

Post by busymom0 »

taormina wrote: post #22
busymom0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was the case, I think we would have had some amazon whistleblower already blow this info and would be widely reported on.

I'm not accusing Amazon or anyone else of anything in particular. I'm just reminding people that even if you encrypt all of your data at rest, that at a minimum, every service provider of something like AWS is collecting plenty of metadata about your data. They have to. How else can they tell where your data is and track how much they need to charge you?

> How else can they tell where your data is and track how much they need to charge you?

Are you being serious with this question? Regardless of whether they look at your data behind the scenes without telling you or not, you don't need to know what type of exact data and metadata you have to charge you. My AWS bill charges me for CPU hours uptime for the server, network requests, load balancing etc. None of this needs them to know your data or even exactly much metadata (other than what domain and server to route to obviously but that's public information anyway).

By your logic, if someone is using end to end encryption, are you saying Amazon wouldn't be able to charge them because they can't look at the encrypted data?

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#58

Post by tinus_hn »

stevenicr wrote: post #56

I used to spend a lot of time looking at logs and trying to make pages better and more content based upon the stats. Then google stopped giving keywords and searched-phrases - I've since found stats of little use most of the time. I wish google would make search-keyword-hiding opt-in for users, and perhaps auto-opted-in if using incognito mode. I am sure most of my visitors would be glad to provide the search phrases…

Even if Google wanted, browsers like Safari are going to strip referrer headers of query terms as you navigate between sites.

Re: Show HN: I replaced Google Analytics with simple log-based analytics

#60

Post by akvadrako »

secfirstmd wrote: post #47
Zolomon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they had a simple Docker image available with everything setup and configurable from a single file. The installation process is complex and under documented, IMHO. But the software is pretty nice!

Even more simple, they have a Cloudron image. Click and deploy.

This looks like you need to pay Cloudron even if you run it on your own server.
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