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Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

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Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#251

Post by isiahl »

GordonS wrote: post #218
bad_user wrote: post #115

I have my own self-hosted Matomo instance [1]. Via Docker & docker-compose it's quite easy to install and keep up to date and Matomo is open source, well maintained, very well behaved and pretty hands off. And I configured it on my websites with cookies turned off [2] and with IP anonymization [3]. In such an instance you don't need consent, or even a cookie banner, because you're not dropping cookies, or collecting…

> And I configured it on my websites with cookies turned off [2] and with IP anonymization [3]. In such an instance you don't need consent, or even a cookie banner, because you're not dropping cookies, or collecting personal info. Profiling visitors is no longer possible, but you still get valuable data on visits. Does this mean each page hit cannot linked to be any other? For example, can I see that a visitor viewed…

Just spitballing here but could you use the Referrer header to track sequences of pages

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#252

Post by GordonS »

JackWritesCode wrote: post #250
GordonS wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like I say, we've had lawyers review our docs. Even the term "fingerprinting" has more nuance to it. Fingerprinting is used as a way to attempt to set a permanent cookie / identify an individual, and their actions. We don't do this. Ouch, I kind of wish you hadn't said that, because it sounds like you're straying dangerously close into weasel words and deliberately incorrectly interpretations. Sorry if that sounds…

Thanks for your input here, Gordon. It doesn't sound harsh at all, you clearly care about privacy regulations and you're trying to help. Ultimately, we had moved based on conversations with lawyers. But as I say, we are rolling out changes this week & next, so it doesn't matter what we think about the regulation :) And thanks again for the challenge.

Thanks for the debate, and I'll be looking out for what you've got coming next!

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#253

Post by m90 »

franky47 wrote: post #228
m90 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, did Firefox revert their decision towards DNT? I remember being confronted with the behavior of it sending DNT headers no matter what, which must have been something around spring 2019.

Possibly, I'm not using the DNT header though, because of the encryption, I need to know about DNT before the analytics data is even sent. I use navigator.doNotTrack, and where it's set I only encrypt and send a minimal visit count event.

I tried to do the exact same thing and had to stop considering DNT as it would essentially collect Chrome only back then. Good thing they have reverted this I guess. DNT makes a lot of sense as a concept still.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#254

Post by mimimi31 »

dclusin wrote: post #191

I use GoAccess. It's an offline access.log analytics engine. One feature it has is to generate static site from its db. I have an hourly cron script that picks up the last hours logs and generates a static site. You can see it in action at https://www.clusin.com/analytics/ 1 - https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess

I've tried GoAccess in the past, but I remember the documentation not being very thorough on certain topics like the databse, websocket connection, or log syntax. So it was a bit of a pain to set up.

It also had some weird quirks like generating duplicate entries or randomly failing to parse some log lines (you seem to have quite a few of those "failed requests" yourelf by the way).

There also doesn't seem to be a good way to display statistics for multiple virtual hosts. Even if you change your log format to include the host, you just get an additional table in the dashboard, but still can't look at the other metrics for each host separately. You'd have to run multiple GoAccess instances to achieve that.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#255

Post by abelaer »

FalconSensei wrote: post #148

Didn't know about GoatCounter. I think its the only free hosted alternative that I saw. Having a small static blog hosted on GithubPages, GA was the only option for me. (Not going to pay for analytics while my blog has like, 10 visits a week)

I just installed goatcounter on my githubPages Jekyll page. 2 minutes of work, works great.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#256

Post by dclusin »

mimimi31 wrote: post #254
dclusin wrote: post #191

I use GoAccess. It's an offline access.log analytics engine. One feature it has is to generate static site from its db. I have an hourly cron script that picks up the last hours logs and generates a static site. You can see it in action at https://www.clusin.com/analytics/ 1 - https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess

I've tried GoAccess in the past, but I remember the documentation not being very thorough on certain topics like the databse, websocket connection, or log syntax. So it was a bit of a pain to set up. It also had some weird quirks like generating duplicate entries or randomly failing to parse some log lines (you seem to have quite a few of those "failed requests" yourelf by the way). There also doesn't seem to be a go…

Yeah I definitely had to open some issues to understand how it works. I have multiple virtual servers as well and wasn’t able to get it to break out links by virtual server.

I figured it’s fine for my needs since I literally have nothing on my domains. I could see it being frustrating for power users.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#257

Post by r3trohack3r »

We launched https://everytwoyears.org today. It was my first project where I felt analytics was necessary, but also a moral quandary. For personal reasons, I'm very against PII big data. For project reasons, the project is literally about stopping mass surveillance so shipping a tool like Google Analytics was firmly off the table.

I went with https://app.usefathom.com which tracks _aggregate anonymized_ data.

They have the option to self host, but I'm sending them money to support the project. With today's launch, I'm really happy with the product. Will continue using it.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#258

Post by johnchristopher »

boromi wrote: post #190
johnchristopher wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily set it up on a VPS with docker, check github for instructions.

Right, I found the official docker image https://github.com/matomo-org/docker But I was hoping for a simple DIY guide for setting everything up? I mean with Google Analytics a dummy can set it up very quickly. I know it'll take more work with matomo, but I need a little more details then just "use docker". I know I need a VPS, something like Digital Ocean. I know I need the matomo docker image.

Sorry for misleading you. You don't need docker to run matomo (docker makes it convenient to install matomo - especially if you are running other containers on your server - but there are shortcomings, mainly the container setup).

Matomo is just a set of php files. Upload them to any php hosting with a mysql database, in a matomo or matomoanalytics folder and point your browser to your domain name/matomo/ and the install setup should begin.

If you have 0 experience with docker and just needs matomo then forget about docker and start from the php file with a standard php/mysql host.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#259

Post by clairity »

JackWritesCode wrote: post #234
clairity wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We're not announcing anything just yet but it'll be our best release to date" not a knock on you or fathom, but it seems like you're in fast-response sales mode here (which is totally fine)... the above is a particularly empty statement. why would any next release not be the best to date? maybe say it should be an exciting release, which is similarly anticipatory without being meaningless sales-speak.

Good point, heh. We're going to be improving speed of aggregation, real time dashboard, page / ref level metrics, more advanced goals and various other pieces.

thanks! in a background thread, i'm on the lookout for a privacy-focused analytics offering. it's for small personal things for now, so leaning toward simple and free, but who knows what the future holds.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#260

Post by markdown »

bad_user wrote: post #244
chrismorgan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I self-hosted Matomo for a year and a half (and took over the AUR package for it and improved it in the process). It was no trouble to run, but I ended up uninstalling it late last year, for a few reasons: its interface is painfully slow (and that’s nothing to do with my 1GB/1 vCPU VPS—I’ve interacted with a decent-sized instance at innocraft.cloud and it was similar), and I seldom looked at it, and I couldn’t think…

My websites are behind Cloudflare. If not Cloudflare then I'd use another CDN. Therefore I don't have logs. Also I disagree about the slowness. The script is loaded asynchrously, it does not block the page and I measure my loading times, which are really good actually. Just did a measurement and my front-page loads in 271 ms and this includes all network requests, including Matomo. I don't think this is a real concer…

> Just did a measurement and my front-page loads in 271 ms and this includes all network requests

Is your audience just the people in your locality, or the entire world?

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