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I intentionally doesn't keep detailed analytics on my homepage server and my digital garden, because I respect my users and don't want to push unnecessary Javascript on them. The blog platform I use (Mataroa) keeps rudimentary analytics (essentially page hit counters, nothing more) on index, RSS and per post.

Both my blog homepage and posts see mostly human traffic. Sometimes bots crawl the site and they appear as spikes in the analytics.

Looks like my homepage which doesn't have anything but links is pretty popular with crawlers. My digital garden doesn't get much interest from them. All in all, human traffic on my sites are pretty much alive.

I don't believe in missing the bus in anything actually, because I don't write these for others, first. Both my blog (more meta) and digital garden (more technical) are written for myself primarily, and left open. I post links to both when it's appropriate, but they are not made to be popular. If people read it and learn something or solve one of their problems, that's enough for me.

This is why my software is GPLv3, Digital Garden is GFDL and blog is CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. This is why everything is running with absolutely minimum analytics and without any ads whatsoever.

Lastly, this is why I don't want AI crawlers in my site and my data in the models. This thing is made by a human for humans, absolutely for free. It's not OK somebody to sell something designed to be free and make money over it.



> I intentionally doesn't keep detailed analytics on my homepage server and my digital garden, because I respect my users and don't want to push unnecessary Javascript on them.

Absolutely, I'm in agreement here. I want to run a JS-free blog, just plain old static HTML. I plan to use GoAccess to parse the access logs but that's it. I think I would find it encouraging to see real human traffic.

> I don't write these for others, first. Both my blog (more meta) and digital garden (more technical) are written for myself primarily, and left open.

That is a great way to view it, thank you.


> That is a great way to view it, thank you.

You're welcome. I'm glad it helped.

> I want to run a JS-free blog, just plain old static HTML.

If you want to start fast until you find a template you want to work with, I can recommend Mataroa [0]. The blog have almost no JS (it binds a couple of keys for navigation, that's it), and it's $10/year. When you feel right in your self-hosted solution, you can move there. It's all Markdown at the end of the day.

> I plan to use GoAccess to parse the access logs but that's it.

That's the only thing I use, too. Nothing else.

If you want to look at what I do, how I do, and reach out to me, the rabbit hole starts from my profile, here.

Wish you all the best, and you may find bliss and joy you never dreamed of!

[0]: https://www.mataroa.blog




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