I am in the midst of creating my first website and wonder about analyzing traffic. I definitely don’t want to use Google Analytics since I want to respect my visitor’s data as much as possible. I am not interested in identifying people’s names or somehow ‘log’ them. Although (anonymous) numbers of recurring visitors would be interesting. Now I am not sure, but believe all tech in this field would rely on the use of cookies and JS, am I right? Something I am not particularly fond of. Therefore, I’d also love to hear your opinions on whether analytics are even that important and worth it. I am just in the beginning of exploring this topic and would appreciate some pointers of you people with experience.
You can, obviously, Google it :), but I already heard about this one somewhere, AFAIR, good things! 
:
Yes, that one I found also. Although my Google-Fu brought up the actual site of the project as it is called now and not a “good-by we’re out of here”. When googling for such things then every single one is the market leader and there are hundreds of them. I was more interested in what’s actually in use by our community, since I think I am not the only one around here with such goals and people are a bit more sensitive to data protection and lesser known open source solutions.
Since I see the overall Blender crowd as intelligent and well-informed people, I hoped for some voices. I do value tips and hints from people here generally higher than those from some random internet sources.
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i probably also would use matomo (formerly known as piwik) on your own server.
or simply use a user statistics plugin for the content management system of your choice. wp-statistics for wordpress for example.
couldn’t have echoed you more what website you making?
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I’m happy seeing you agree with me
For the site I’m planning:
Content wise I want to tell not too much right now, for I don’t know how long it will actually take me to get this thing online. There’s a lot of stuff to learn, when you never did web tech. But you are long enough around to know that the tech support section on BA is a place where I spend a lot of time. So it will have something to do with that.
Tech wise I set my goal to not use a CMS or database and don’t bother my visitors with cookies and stuff. Initially I wanted to leave out scripting also, but there is so much cool stuff to play with xD.
You can use Google Analytics since is very detailed, it would allow you to become more aware about how the website is accessed and used, many things count, like locality / devices / browsers / languages / age groups / etc.
As for example for some reason if one of your articles had many visits, it would make you assume that you would expand upon the topic with even more details. If your age groups are more of young people, it would make you assume that you would need to reform your articles in such way that are plain-easy to follow (spare the details and jump straight to simple results). As of having so much details, it would make you somewhat more aware about how to adjust your content and your behavior to make helpful content.
On the other hand if you don’t even care about such details at the moment, you can start with simple stuff. As for example the “Webalyzer” analytics (open source) is shipped with each and every web hosting server for free (accessed through user control panel). Perhaps other simple stuff are things like “visitor maps” or “live visitor counter”.
Thanks for the answer.
Yes Webalyzer comes with my hosting solution but it is pretty barebones. While I see the amount of info you get from GA as tempting, as you explained, I don’t see it as an option.
First using GA here in Germany has legal implications as far as I’m aware of and secondly it doesn’t really fit my personal views on ethics regarding handling of user data.
As for example from time to time using Youtube, displays a humongous message banner that asks for user consent about collecting personal data. Which essentially has a huge fat “I AGREE” button. Essentially it means that by if someone disagrees about privacy, simply would get voluntarily-self-ban from the entire Youtube. Which is a bit of an extreme measure.
However the good thing about google analytics is that only do tracking if the javascript tag is attached to the HTML webpage and logs by the time is loaded and sends a request back to Google. So having an extra functionality, that would let the user choose whether or not wants to be tracked could be another measure for better transparency.
I think Google’s way of spying on you (including KIDS for God’s sake, as you may know) is horrifying - however, the damn thing is Free, we can’t question that! (I don’t think anyone subscribes to Red HERE, at least, donno).
Just use the BRAVE browser, it says something about “anti tracking measures” - probably your best bet, IMHO.