About GoatCounter, The Web Analytics I Use

I like to develop website. I also like to write blogs, poems, post mortem, thoughts, tutorial, anything. I enjoy doing those things that even if I cannot publish (some of) them, I've got more experience and I feel good.

But.

Let's be real here. I have itches. Curiosity. Social needs? Maybe, but I try avoid social media, or silo — as the IndieWeb folks call it. I try to serve this site keeping my ethic¹ and readers' privacy. I also want to know whether anyone read my posts, and I want my works to be assessed by fellow readers. The assessment can be as simple as likes and thumb-ups (Luke Smith hilariously calls them upcummies²). The assessment can also be comments or text feedbacks, this is what I prefer the most.

With the stuff I just told you in mind, I decided that I will implement analytic³ and response system to this site. So I researched for the tools. The main requirements are lightweight and respects users' privacy.

For the response system, I found WebMention, which leads me to know more about IndieWeb. The current candidate for the direct commenting system is Isso. The first I implemented is web analytics. Already suggested in this post's title, I use GoatCounter.

About GoatCounter

GoatCounter is web analytics by Martin Tournoij or arp242. It is lightweight, it is easy to implement, and it respects users' privacy. See its privacy policy here.

One embarassing thing is that I follow Martin's RSS Feed for so long, but I didn't read about his latest project. Before GoatCounter, I tried StatCounter and opted-out shortly because I think the settings page is clumsy. I searched for another good alternatives that results none. Just last monday I see Martin published a new post about GoatCounter update. I decided to check it and that day, I tried GoatCounter.

You can see my instance of GoatCounter on stats.ybbond.dev!

I made it open for everyone and set obvious statement down in the footer of my website, because I think however small the data I take from user visits, the users should be able to know about it.

1. A good post from iA, "Ethics" and Ethics by Oliver Reichenstein. Read it here on their site. ↩

2. Reference is from video Social Media: Anything for Upcummies! ⬆🍆💦💦 by Luke Smith. You can watch it here on YouTube. ↩

3. I even stated in my post about migrating to Hugo that I will implement tracker. ↩