You have a website? Maybe you need some analytics!

When I created this website, I did not included any web statistics usages. I naively though I didn’t care.

But, finally, it came the moment when I wondered: did someone read my posts?

I know for sure that I have been read, at least my OPA post (👋 Hello Anders Eknert and all those retweeted!)… but that’s all I know…

Definitely, I needed some basic stats!

Here is a quick post about what I did for this site.

The classical approach: Google Analytics

Yep. I could have use the classical Google Analytics approach: simple, easy to implement with the theme I choosed, free…

However, I wanted something more open source. Ideally, it would hbe free, easy to use and out of the scope of classical big tech giants.

Note

There is a movement, in France, supported by an association to “degooglize” the internet (ie to stop internet centralization on GAFAM solutions, and to promote Open sources alternatives). I am not an activist (I use a lot of Google Services), but I’d like this idea!

That is why I did not select option.

Alternative approach: GoatCounter 🐐

Yes! If you are reading this, you are considered as goats! 😄

So, I just integrated the GoatCounter free account (as I’m not doing commercial usage of it)!

I let you browse the website, as I cannot display something interesting yet (yes, it is in place since yesterday (October 14th), and I do not have so much traffic 😅).

It is basic, but efficient (except ifg you have a Brave browseror an AdBlocker, but that’s fine for me).

Hugo integration

As my website is in Hugo, I had to adjust the template I use and forked.

Quite easy: I just edited the /layouts/partials/extended_heads.html file by adding this code:

{{ if .Site.Params.GoatCounter }}
<script data-goatcounter="https://{{ .Site.Params.GoatCounter }}.goatcounter.com/count" async  src="//gc.zgo.at/count.js"></script>
{{ end }}

… and adjusted my config.yaml file to have a

params:
  goatCounter: "arnaduga"

attribute.

And that’s all good!

(I told you it was a short post 😉)