Live data from Hacker News

We ditched Google Analytics

missiveapp.com

21–30 of 79 posts

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#21
post #15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like LocalStorage in this case is just a way to get around people deleting/blocking cookies. What would be the legitimate use?

> What would be the legitimate use? Caching/storing GUI state and user configuration. You (the server) doesn't need to know about LocalStorage contents. You can read and write from it via JS without ever sending that data somewhere. It actually improves privacy if done this way, because then the user owns the data and you just act upon it. Unfortunately Apple thinks otherwise, they clear LocalStorage in Safari after…

Yeah we use this on our Chrome Extension Next Up to avoid sending data to our server. Keeps everything cached locally and lot less data in transit

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#22
post #20
post #3

Is anyone using an open source statistics system that's as simple as simple analytics? Maybe even something that can be setup to run stats for multiple clients from our own VPS?

Freshlytics - https://github.com/sheshbabu/freshlytics * Cookies are not used * Personally identifiable information (PII) is not collected * See the pageview in different dimensions like page urls, referrers, browsers etc * Supports multiple projects * Supports RBAC Screenshots - https://github.com/sheshbabu/freshlytics/blob/master/docs/sc...

I really like the look of this. And I really like the response here regarding "blockers" [0].

Is there any documented way to let users opt-out sans ublock:o (or other)? Or configure it to respect "Do Not Track"?

[0] https://github.com/sheshbabu/freshlytics/issues/12

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#23
I have been in the process of moving all of my stuff off of Google services (while I have an excessive amount of free time during Shelter In Place. So I recently moved from Google Analytics to https://usefathom.com . I quite like it. I would like to see how many people read my stuff, but I value my privacy and would like to do the same for others. It's pretty good, and

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#25
Call me old-fashioned, but if developers really want to minimize their impact on visitors, I wonder why they shifted away from using plain old log files. In the screenshot of the dashboard, "screen size" is the only attribute I see which can't be derived from a web server request log entry.

I was using Analog to analyze Apache logs back in the 1990's -- it's older than JS.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#27
post #25

Call me old-fashioned, but if developers really want to minimize their impact on visitors, I wonder why they shifted away from using plain old log files. In the screenshot of the dashboard, "screen size" is the only attribute I see which can't be derived from a web server request log entry. I was using Analog to analyze Apache logs back in the 1990's -- it's older than JS.

Because a lot of times things are hosted on services where you don't have access to raw log files (Netlify for example).

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#28
I ran for quite a while without any analytics after removing GA. I've now settled on Fathom for Kubestack.

It was important to me to be mindful about the privacy of my visitors but at the same time I need some data to see if I'm on the right track. Fathom seemed like a good compromise.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#29
post #25

Call me old-fashioned, but if developers really want to minimize their impact on visitors, I wonder why they shifted away from using plain old log files. In the screenshot of the dashboard, "screen size" is the only attribute I see which can't be derived from a web server request log entry. I was using Analog to analyze Apache logs back in the 1990's -- it's older than JS.

I think it's part of a larger trend of outsourcing logic/services to outside SaaSs. Reminds me of that image posted here on HN of a spider-web of all of the SaaS products that just one company used centered around Salesforce.

For almost every SaaS one can always say "yeah but I can do it myself by doing A, B, and C" but the fact is that time is precious, and if you outsource parts of your website/product, it means for $19 a month you're getting a product that is worked on full-time by 4 engineers.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#30
post #28

I ran for quite a while without any analytics after removing GA. I've now settled on Fathom for Kubestack. It was important to me to be mindful about the privacy of my visitors but at the same time I need some data to see if I'm on the right track. Fathom seemed like a good compromise.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN