dvko

Sure, without issues. All (standard and custom) post types are supported!

Sorry, this is indeed what I meant to say. Will update the text!

Hey, glad you ask because I feel strongly about this!

We're absolutely against fingerprinting as I believe it's better (for the visitor) to just use a cookie in those cases, since they retain control that way. (Delete cookie = be forgotten.)

That's why we opt for a cookie by default, as I believe it is more in "the spirit of the law" than fingerprinting the visitor and storing information about them server-side.

So, when you disable the cookie the plugin falls back on checking the `document.referrer` value for determining returning visitors and unique pageviews. It's a lot less reliable obviously, but some price has to be paid if you do not want to rely on storing something client-side.

The plugin doesn't use IP addresses at all, so this isn't needed. There is an option to determine returning visitors using a cookie (easiest, realiable) but it can be turned off.

When not using a cookie, the plugin will look at the `document.referrer` value to determine whether a visitor is returning and whether a pageview is unique (less reliable, but should be good enough for some).

IP addresses are not looked at at all (let alone stored).

With the plugin active, you can load the tracking script manually and it will work. That said, it could probably be made easier. How would you like to see this?

Hey, this uses a tracking request that is initiated client-side. So even if the page is not generated dynamically, Koko Analytics will work just fine.

Hey, developer here. Thank you, would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for it.

PS. Since this is brought up all the time: in case anyone wonders why this feels similar to Fathom Analytics, it is because I built the initial open-source version of Fathom too.

Koko Analytics is my attempt at a truly open-source and self-hosted tool that is easy to install (ie not just for those who know their way around a server).

The SEO framework (slug: autodescription) is great and performs about 30x as good as Yoast SEO in terms of processing time. They’re also pretty strict about sticking to WordPress’ native styles.

It has been addressed and their CEO offered hundreds of apologies on Twitter. It is definitely not okay and I would still not use them as there are better plugins out there, but they (now) say they made a mistake and owned it.

Close to 20.000 emails, ~4.5 GB in size. Tried using Google's data takeout first, but imapsync worked way better (while slower).

Yes. And comes with a neat status page to warn you of any issues in case things change (but they shouldn't if you use a dedicated box).

I've been running Mailinabox since late 2016 and have experienced 0 issues with downtime or my emails being flagged as spam. It did take a few weeks to train SpamAssassin to properly flag incoming email as spam but that worked very well and it. just. works. nowadays.

Recently I closed down my lingering Gmail account and used imapsync to copy over all my email and contacts to my Mailinabox.

I've also moved it to a different VPS provider once without any issues. Setup mailinabox on new server, close ports on old server, create final back-up, import back-up, switch DNS, done. 0 emails missed.

Integrations with popular services for legacy codebases. Preferrably for a service the user is already paying for.

Personally my product is “X for WordPress”, where X is a marketing tool that grew a lot over the last decade.

I fully agree with this sentiment. I myself piggy-backed my product (or rather: feature) on a much langer company which was growing like crazy and have been able to grow it to a comfortable $40.000 per month over the last 6 years. It’s just me doing the bulk of the work with 2 friends helping out to handle 1st level support.

Now that it is a mature product and as long as the company I depend upon does not overhaul their API, it’s really just a 10hr/week job, affording me more freedom than is good for me.

I’d say there are loads of opportunities like this out there, especially in places developers do not want to go because they are not deemed cutting-edge or fun.

Email, using mailinabox.email. Highly recommend it.

Also NextCloud (files, contacts and calendar), few WordPress websites and Fathom for website analytics.

This almost reads like a joke. Rough up your life by carrying your own groceries and not flying first class? Really?

And yeah, the mansion in a state specificially chosen to pay as little tax as possible plus accompanying Ferrari and staff will surely help in finding someone who's going to love him for who he is rather than for his money...

How are you hosting your blog? If you're already self-hosting that, please know that you can easily host a Fathom instance using SQLite (because easy) on that same server without having to worry of it eating up your system resources.

From experience, a Fathom instance on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet can easily handle millions of pageviews a month. It's really quite efficient.

I dropped out of college at 22 with a huge amount of student debt to start a business while traveling through Asia & the US (am from Europe).

After the business took off and the money, countries or the countless short-term friendships stopped providing enough meaning for me I started looking for the next thing.

Now, I'm back on the same path that others never ventured off of. Close to my family & a handful of very good friends, with a great partner and a lovely daughter as of a few months ago. It's simple, it's beautiful.

https://GoAccess.io is great for analysing access logs.

That said, there are solutions where a cookie allows for greater privacy because it allows you to leave sensitive data on the client versus having to store it on the server. For example, https://usefathom.com/ is an open-source self-hosted analytics tool that uses a cookie to enhance privacy.

Check out Fathom Analytics. It's open-source, modern, only tracks aggregates and can handle up to 20.000 pageviews per second on a cheap $3/month VPS.

http://github.com/usefathom/fathom

There is a hosted version available if you don't want to take care of managing the installation yourself. You can always move to a self-hosted instance later on too, there is no lock-in there.

If this list were named "alternatives to Google products" then I'd say it is a good list. But privacy friendly? How so exactly?

There are several closed-source proprietary services on the list, with better (in terms of nearly everything: user base, maturity, feature completeness, ...) open-source alternatives available.

To name just a few per category:

- Analytics: Matomo (formerly Piwik), Fathom Analytics, OpenWebAnalytics.

- Password managers: passwordstore.org, Keepass

- Cloud storage: NextCloud, TresorIt

But you're paying a closed-source and for-profit company instead, so how exactly is that better than Matomo or Fathom?

If you need an open-source solution that truly cares about privacy yet can still keep track of unique pageviews, there's always Fathom Analytics (https://github.com/usefathom/fathom).

Hah, I thought of that too when I saw the stats. Surely HN readers all have DNT enabled?!

That said, I am now wondering what the numbers would have been like if we did not honor DNT...

Thanks!

Can you elaborate a little bit on the use-cases where this would apply? I can get into the idea that tracking would ideally not rely on JavaScript, but the dashboard? Surely the administrator can enable JavaScript for their Fathom dashboard, right?

We hear you. This is pretty much top on the list of things to add in the (very) near future!

Thanks! We're not too concerned about that too be honest, we'll still be open-source with the ability to self-host after all. Something that Google Analytics will never offer.

Given the current state of Google Analytics, staying ahead in terms of simplicity shouldn't be an issue for a long, long time.

Confirmed. Thanks for reporting!

Hey, good to see you already running Fathom!

Just wanted to add that you can also use Fathom with MySQL or SQLite if that's more your cup of tea. It supports those 3 database engines right now.

Hey, not yet but we're planning on setting up a public roadmap on Trello, like how JSFiddle does it.

[1] https://trello.com/b/LakLkQBW/jsfiddle-roadmap