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arne 2022-10-06 20:29:53 +02:00
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src/posts/2022-10-06-non-icky-website-statistics.md
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@ -17,9 +17,9 @@ I want to spare you an extensive analysis of the different market interests at p
## Data scarcity
The single question I find most useful when collecting personal data is _do I really need this?_
The single question I find most useful when collecting personal data is _do I really need it?_
Not "may I need this later" or "could it increase the value of my product", but "do I need this for the specific problem I am trying to solve". You may not need website statistics. You probably do not need detailed insights into how people move their eyeballs while browsing the information you offer. My personal experience is that at least 90% of the analytics e-mails in companies I have worked for go unread.
Not "may I need it later" or "could it increase the value of my product", but "do I need it for the specific problem I am trying to solve". You may not need website statistics. You probably do not need detailed insights into how people move their eyeballs while browsing the information you offer. My personal experience is that at least 90% of the analytics e-mails in companies I have worked for go unread.
I'd like to make a point that most tracking is not just unnecessary, it is harmful. Extensive data collection opens the door for abuse. It is impossible to know which kind of insights can be deduced from data gathered and the effective safeguard against this is to only collect data for a strictly defined purpose. I am in a nerdy way drawn towards statistical measures and a quantification of self and things around me. I still try to stop and think what exactly I would like to measure and for what purpose and I invite you to do the same.
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ I personally stopped using client-side tracking altogether, which brings me to m
### Option B
Saving the best for last: [goaccess](https://goaccess.io/)! Goaccess analyzes your server logs and presents useful insights to you in the form of a dashboard. It does not require adding any JavaScript to your page whatsoever! It _does require_ you to be able to get access to said logs, which may not be easy if you are on a shared server.
Saving the best for last: [goaccess](https://goaccess.io/)! Goaccess analyzes your server logs and presents useful insights to you in the form of a dashboard. It does not require adding any JavaScript to your page whatsoever! It _does require_ you to be able to access said logs, which may not be easy if you are on a shared server.
These logs are most likely stored on your server anyways and are usually deleted after a short period of around 7 days. Goaccess supports the log formats of different web servers out of the box and because these are just text files you can use common command line tools like `grep` to filter the logs before piping them into `goaccess` to analyze them. There is a command-line interface you can use to gain some insights from the logs, or `goaccess` can output an HTML file with different graphs and visualizations. This is what I use to look at this page's statistics: