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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Are there any "Google Analytics" alternatives that aren't based on Python, Node, Go, etc but something with a PHP back-end that can be deployed to any commodity LAMP hosting provider?

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Would awstats meet this criteria? Not PHP but even simpler. I have data from it going back to 2006 (maybe 2002 if I dig up backups), which is a lot of fun.

https://www.awstats.org/

I remember once at a previous job one of the devs forgot to setup google analytics which was the go to tool at the time. Client calls in wanting to get some stats for their site after 3 months, and we had nothing... thankfully awstats comes with cpanel without any additional setup, and we had something to show. Not great, but better than nothing.

You could check the ReverseEagle list: https://developers.reverseeagle.org/replace/google-analytics...

Also, anyone with a Tedomum account? It'd be nice if you could open an issue about adding umami.is. https://forge.tedomum.net/ReverseEagle/developers/-/issues

Thanks! PS. there is a typo here (should be 'statisfy'): https://developers.reverseeagle.org/replace/google-analytics...

Oh thanks, we'll edit that in

The advantage of Go is that you can compile it to a single (static) binary, and then it doesn't really matter what the rest of the backend is running. Unlike Python, Node, PHP, etc. you don't need to set up an environment.

Matomo uses php

And it's "Wordpress easy" to setup and doesn't require special access or server config?

Yes. On the first run it will take you to a wizard to set it up.

There's even a plugin for wordpress that embeds matomo itself if memory serves right.

Totally! Just set an instance up the other day. Done in five minutes, you'll only need database credentials and a somewhat "normal" PHP setup.

It's as easy as setting up GA in WordPress. Just inject the JavaScript snippet built by your Matomo instance when creating a new tracker.

I think the question was if the software itself is actually simple to set up with a commodity web host. As easy as upload via ftp and configure in webbrowser easy.

Oops, my bad. You are totally right.

I built one: https://usertrack.net

It has a plain PHP + MySQL backend, so it's really easy to install (on a LAMP server, as a WordPress plugin or one-click install on a DigitalOcean droplet).

When I started building it 8 years ago, the idea was exactly this, it should run on any basic shared hosting that can run PHP, so any site can just have its own analytics dashboard, without relying on 3rd parties.

For userTrack, the LAMP installation process has 3 main steps:

1. Upload the script files.

2. Create a MySQL database for the script to use.

3. Run the auto-installer (to set up DB connection and create the tables in DB).

https://docs.usertrack.net/installation/uploading-the-script

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