add analytics draft

content/posts/dopamine-dispensers.md 🔗

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+---
+title: "Dopamine dispensers"
+author: ["Amolith"]
+published: 2023-02-26T23:09:00-05:00
+categories: ["Meta"]
+draft: true
+toc: true
+---

content/posts/privacy-respecting-analytics.md 🔗

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+---
+title: "Privacy-respecting analytics"
+date: 2023-03-03T18:05:11-05:00
+categories: ["Technology"]
+tags: ["Privacy", "Web"]
+draft: true
+toc: false
+---
+
+For a long time, I was so vehemently opposed to analytics on personal websites
+that I condemned people using privacy-respecting systems like [Plausible] on
+their blog, shouting about mUh PrIvAcY and saying that these platforms only
+boosted the bloggers' ego and they would end up writing for their readers rather
+than personal enjoyment. I'm realising that I was kinda dumb 🤔
+
+[Plausible]: https://plausible.io/
+
+One of my clients recently asked if I could add analytics to the website I
+created for them. I said yes and asked whether they had a preference as to which
+analytics system. They said no, they just wanted to see how many people were
+using the website and whether they were actually looking at the menu and store
+pages. I decided to set them up with [Umami,][umami] because it has a very
+simple UI, it's not affiliated with Big Tech™ companies, [it's
+GDPR-compliant,](umami-gdpr), and the script is only 2 KBs.
+
+[umami]: https://umami.is/
+[umami-gdpr]: https://umami.is/docs/faq
+
+Analytics on a business's website is a no-brainer. Business websites should be
+pleasant, ergonomic, and useful for their customers and analytics do assist with
+that goal. But what about on personal websites? The big reason Google Analytics
+is so often condemned is because of Google; you bet your ass they're aggregating
+the data they collect from all of their properties and associating that
+information with your visitors' profiles (yes, even if they don't have a Google
+account). Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. do exactly the same thing with all of
+their like/share buttons. They're ingesting as much data as they can to feed
+their advertising engines and I don't want to further their mass surveillance of
+the internet.
+
+The privacy issues with analytics primarily apply to the big providers that
+aggregate everything across their customers' properties in order to surveil
+everyone everywhere. Systems like Umami are different. The minimal data that's
+collected is anonymised and stays in-house, on your (preferrably) self-hosted
+server. When you really give it some thought, there's nothing inherently wrong
+with knowing how many visitors your site has, what pages they're viewing, and
+what website they came from.
+
+I enabled Umami on my website shortly after coming to this realisation and [made
+the analytics page public.][public]
+
+[public]: https://umami.secluded.site/share/7PNXq2e8/Secluded.Site
+
+The referrers section is fascinating when you bump the period from "Today" to
+"All time". There are some unusual search engines, a couple onion addresses,
+another of my own websites [(scratchanitch.dev)][sai], and even some personal
+ones. After seeing other individuals link to my website, I had the idea to use
+GitHub's [Code Search] feature to poke around and see [where else it was
+mentioned.][cs-results]
+
+[sai]: https://scratchanitch.dev/
+[Code Search]: https://github.com/features/code-search/
+[cs-results]: https://github.com/search?q=%22secluded.site%22&type=code
+
+A suprising number of people seem to be referencing my _[Vim as a Markdown
+Editor][vme]_ post. I haven't thought about that post since I wrote it, much
+less updated it. Taking a look at Umami indicates that it's by far my most
+popular one. Maybe I should have another look at it and see if there's anything
+that needs to be improved ...
+
+[vme]: https://secluded.site/vim-as-a-markdown-editor/
+
+Knowing that there are people visiting my site and that some of the things I've
+written are useful is, frankly, quite encouraging. That's why I'm writing this
+post, that's part of what inspired my next one, and it's why I intend to start
+writing more. I do enjoy writing, but the idea of tossing something I've spent
+hours on into the void of the internet isn't exactly motivating.

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content/posts/dopamine-dispensers.md 🔗

content/posts/privacy-respecting-analytics.md 🔗