Ask HN: What do you use for analytics for a statically generated website?
I recently deployed a Hugo blog that I'm locally hosting. I would like to know roughly how much traffic it's getting (almost nothing except friends right now, but I still would like some data).
Obviously I could use Google Analytics or something, but I would rather not introduce any kind of Google tracking to my site. Honestly I think I'd be happy enough with one of those "counter" things from the 90's.
Does anyone here have anything? It's been forever since I've done anything like this, I'm sure the state of the art has advanced.
GoAccess looks interesting; to be sincere, I haven't used it myself, but the demo website looks extremely fascinating to me! https://goaccess.io/
I use goaccess for analytics on my site. It was pretty simple to set up with nginx access logs.
Check out GoatCounter: https://www.goatcounter.com/.
I've used it for six years and am quite happy with it.
I highly recommend Goatcounter! It’s a reliable tool with a great free version. You can even self-host it.
I also use GoatCounter for my Hugo page
Check out tirreno: https://play.tirreno.com (admin/tirreno)
It's self-hosted, PHP/Postgresql, server-side. Plus, you can get a free tier with 1,000 API requests/month if you want to enrich data about your IP visitors. As a co-founder, I believe it's one of the most advanced solutions available. (-;
If not joking, I use tirreno for some personal websites with partly masked IP as it shows very interesting insights about bots and their behavior.
Under 90s thing you probably mean is awstats (https://github.com/eldy/awstats). CERN and many other organizations continue to use it even now.
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Since you are hosting your blog on your personal server, I would just go with Mixpanel or postHog. They are quite easy to integrate and they enable you to track some more specific events that might be relevant for you.
If you ever decide to host your blog on a cloud provider, Cloudflare provides nice and simple analytics.
Your web host should provide some options such as AWstats based on the server logs. Your host may or may not make it easy to install something else.
My web host is a small server in my basement with dynamic DNS.
I self host plausible. Also interested to check GoAccess once I move away from Netlify to my own VPS
Plausible. I make sure to proxy it so extensions don't block it.
Good enough for me.
Cloudflare Analytics: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/web-analytics/
Oh! I didn't know Cloudflare had a free analytics service.
That's probably the easiest thing while not adding Google to my stack.
I've tried goaccess and goatcounter, finally settling for umami.
I analyse the server logs with awk + friends, filtering out obvious bots.
Do you have any scripts you'd be willing to share for that?
There's really nothing very exciting except I don't want to sure the bits used to keep out bots to avoid them being gamed too easily!
The main script is ~10 key lines. If you send me contact details (eg via stuff in my bio) I could send it over to give you some ideas.
Which Fits You? For simplicity: Use server logs + GoAccess (no code changes). For insights: Self-host Matomo (privacy-first). For a retro feel: Client-side counter (least reliable but fun).
Did you deploy of vercel? they provide analytics as well
It's just a static blog being served via Nginx on my home server.
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