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tournesol-app / tournesol

Free and open source code of the https://tournesol.app platform. Meet the community on Discord https://discord.gg/WvcSG55Bf3
https://tournesol.app
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Investigate open source web analytics software #1111

Closed GresilleSiffle closed 1 year ago

GresilleSiffle commented 2 years ago

WIP I'm still gathering information...

What we could look in each software:

TL;DR

Matomo is a mature Google Analytics-like tool. It comes with a lof of features and a relative complexity. Visitors consent is required with default configuration.

Plausible is new, lightweight and has a strong focus on simplicity, speed and privacy. No visitor consent is required to use it.

Open Web Analytics, to complete...

I recommend to test as many solutions as possible when the team behind the projects propose a free trial

Matomo

It looks like one of the oldest open source analytics tools, initially published in 2007. It as now a lot of features and the team behind it propose professional services like hosted instances and training.

Matomo and privacy

The French CNIL organization states that Matomo version 4 can be configured to gather only a limited amount of data, and if configured properly can be exempted of asking the explicit consent to the website visitors (see https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookies-et-autres-traceurs/regles/cookies-solutions-pour-les-outils-de-mesure-daudience).

More info

Description from GitHub

Matomo is the leading Free/Libre open analytics platform.

Matomo is a full-featured PHP MySQL software program that you download and install on your own webserver. At the end of the five-minute installation process, you will be given a JavaScript code. Simply copy and paste this tag on websites you wish to track and access your analytics reports in real-time.

Matomo aims to be a Free software alternative to Google Analytics and is already used on more than 1,400,000 websites. Privacy is built-in!

First version published in 2007, last version 4.11.0 the 3rd of august 2022.

Open Web Analytics

Open Web Analytics and privacy

OWA respects GDRP and other privacy frameworks.

(See https://www.openwebanalytics.com/ ).

More info

Last version 1.7.7 the 16th of February 2022.

Plausible

A lightweight and very recent analytics tool, built with modern technologies and apparently focused on privacy. It seems rather easy to self host thanks to Docker.

Plausible and privacy

More info

Description from GitHub

Plausible Analytics is a simple, lightweight (< 1 KB), open-source and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It doesn’t use cookies and is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. You can self-host Plausible or have us run it for you in the Cloud. Here's the live demo of our own website stats. Made and hosted in the EU.

We are dedicated to making web analytics more privacy-friendly. Our mission is to reduce corporate surveillance by providing an alternative web analytics tool which doesn’t come from the AdTech world. The full-time team consists of Uku Taht and Marko Saric. We are completely independent, self-funded and bootstrapped.

Also on the home page :

No need for cookie banners or GDPR consent

First version published in 2022, last version 1.4.4 the 22nd of January 2022.

Plausible VS. Matomo (by Plausible)

https://plausible.io/vs-matomo

Matomo is more like a full blown Google Analytics alternative.

There are 12 main sections on the left-side navigation menu with more than 70 individual reports within them.

This means that Matomo collects and displays hundreds of different website metrics. For some website owners, all of these metrics and reports might be useful but the majority will probably never look at more than a fraction of them.

Plausible is built with simplicity and ease of use in mind.

Plausible cuts through all that noise that Google Analytics creates. Plausible is more simple to use as it tracks a smaller number of metrics and presents them on an easier to understand dashboard.

Rather than tracking every metric imaginable, many of them that you will never find a use for, Plausible focuses on the most essential website stats only.

There is no navigational menu. There are no additional sub-menus. There is no need to create custom reports. We provide you with a simple and useful web analytics dashboard out of the box.

Privacy regulations and the need for cookie notices and GDPR or CCPA consent.

With Matomo being a full-blown Google Analytics-like tool, it is using cookies and it is collecting personal data by default for reports such as session recordings and heatmaps.

To make Matomo privacy regulation compliant and to not have to ask your visitors for cookie or GDPR consent, you can take these steps.

GresilleSiffle commented 2 years ago

Technical details about Plausible

Using a proxy

It looks like we can serve the script with a proxy to get more accurate data.

https://plausible.io/docs/proxy/introduction#are-you-concerned-about-missing-data

There are extensions

For edge cases the default script doesn't handle.

https://plausible.io/docs/script-extensions#all-our-script-extensions

How to track goals and custom events with React?

There is an NPM package.

https://plausible.io/docs/integration-guides#npm-package

We can exclude the core team from the stats

But it can be useful to have an external point of view of our behaviour.

https://plausible.io/docs/excluding

We can also exclude pages.

https://plausible.io/docs/excluding-pages

Some events we can track

In addition to the events we talked about (tutorial, signup, etc.)

We can punctually share stats by creating a shared link

https://plausible.io/docs/shared-links

GresilleSiffle commented 2 years ago

proposition of custom tracked events

It's easy to add custom events with the NPM implementation of Plausible.

events related to the Tournesol

These goals will allow to see how friendly Tournesol is for newcomers. The public dataset downloads also seem relevant, maybe not currently, but in the long term.

events recommended by Plausible

GresilleSiffle commented 1 year ago

We decided to try a self hosted version of plausible.io