Rethinking Analytics: Balancing Privacy, Performance, and Essential Data
As I build a directory of software engineering blogs, I’ve noticed a growing trend: more developers are choosing to turn off website analytics in favor of privacy and performance. It got me thinking about my own approach to tracking visitors. While I’ve ditched Google Analytics in favor of self-hosted Matomo, I’m also exploring simpler solutions like parsing raw access logs. In this post, I dive into the balance between respecting user privacy and still gathering the critical data needed to monitor the health and security of a website.