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Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

counter.dev

71–80 of 81 posts

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#71
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the best analytics software I ever saw, ca. 1998, where it'd track each individual visitor's path through the site, e.g. - [12:00 - 89.212.12.whatever] - /index.php - [12:01 - 89.212.12.whatever] - /team/bob-smith/ - [12:02 - 89.212.12.whatever] - /products/turb-encab-9001/

Like the server's access log?

Yes, except as a clickable tree, so you could see the path each visitor took through the site

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#72
From GitHub:

"We only track the first page the user views, this is again more privacy friendly and additionally also results in substantial less HTTP requests the server has to handle. As a result of this strategy, Counter is able to show top landing pages but not top pages"

May not be big for some people, but that seems to be a very big consideration folks should be aware of.

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#74
post #22
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why with counter you can get started in like 10 seconds. And permanently delete your data via the GUI if you don't like it :-)

Have you considered applying to YC? Email hn@ycombinator.com if you'd like some tips or feedback with that. (Same offer goes for anybody! Just please realize that I can't always reply quickly and sometimes take embarrassingly forever.)

Well, people that know me know that I am not arrogant but actually I'd like to counter (pun intended) that offer. My Co-Founder and me want to work one year full time on the project. Here is our mail: hey@counter.dev

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#75
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. Here in Berlin there is/was also a restaurant where you could pay what you want when you leave and it seemed to also work there. I can imagine important is to explicitly state that you do have costs and are expecting payment - it's just not such a strict thing and if you are a student of course you pay less. Let's see how it goes.

Agreed. I got the idea from the Humble Bundle[1] and wondered if it could work with physical products as well, instead of digital. Turns out there are more businesses than I thought doing it, even in the city I live, although it mostly seems limited to be coffee shops and restaurants for some reason. If nothing else, this experience showed me that people can be pretty generous if you give them the chance, which chang…

> I will definitely keep an eye on Counter.dev as an alternative to that, good luck!

Thanks! If you need something, write us an mail.

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#76
post #74
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered applying to YC? Email hn@ycombinator.com if you'd like some tips or feedback with that. (Same offer goes for anybody! Just please realize that I can't always reply quickly and sometimes take embarrassingly forever.)

Well, people that know me know that I am not arrogant but actually I'd like to counter (pun intended) that offer. My Co-Founder and me want to work one year full time on the project. Here is our mail: hey@counter.dev

Sorry, but I'm not understanding this.

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#78

What if someone programmatically hit: https://simple-web-analytics.com/track?referrer=spam.com&screen=0x0&user=counter&utcoffset=1 Your product looks great, by the way!

Well, I do have Dos protection so you'r traffic would get rejected at some point in time but it would make me unhappy because I'll have to fix up the data for demo or restore the backup for it. You'll have to do a little better than just that but generally speaking I can't 100% secure myself about the demo data being skewed. Other analytics may have a better position here because they do track and mess with the requester's IP address but I don't. [Writing in my lunch time]

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#79
post #78

What if someone programmatically hit: https://simple-web-analytics.com/track?referrer=spam.com&screen=0x0&user=counter&utcoffset=1 Your product looks great, by the way!

Well, I do have Dos protection so you'r traffic would get rejected at some point in time but it would make me unhappy because I'll have to fix up the data for demo or restore the backup for it. You'll have to do a little better than just that but generally speaking I can't 100% secure myself about the demo data being skewed. Other analytics may have a better position here because they do track and mess with the reque…

Obviously I won't do anything like that!

Nevertheless, some bad actor may take advantage of the simplicity of the implementation (which is, at the same time, also a strong feature of your product). Of course this would affect every user, not just the demo account.

I think this is one common issue with analytics products (Google Analytics itself has ridiculous amounts of spam referrers!). I guess may be a good idea to be proactive and plan some countermeasure at some point.

Happy lunch!

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#80
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I do have Dos protection so you'r traffic would get rejected at some point in time but it would make me unhappy because I'll have to fix up the data for demo or restore the backup for it. You'll have to do a little better than just that but generally speaking I can't 100% secure myself about the demo data being skewed. Other analytics may have a better position here because they do track and mess with the reque…

Obviously I won't do anything like that! Nevertheless, some bad actor may take advantage of the simplicity of the implementation (which is, at the same time, also a strong feature of your product). Of course this would affect every user, not just the demo account. I think this is one common issue with analytics products (Google Analytics itself has ridiculous amounts of spam referrers!). I guess may be a good idea to…

For every user you'd have to know all usernames which could be brute forced guessed or gathered with some sort of crawler.

It's definitely a great point you bring up I think with web analytics an attacker has a natural advantage since captchas would obviously not be feasable. But it is worth to but effort in not making it too easy.

> Happy lunch!

Thanks :-) gonna start with my normal job now^^

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