if anyone here uses this (especially in combination with Discourse) – I know I could ask on Plausible Discourse as well, but a simple search yields no answer there…
If the Discourse @team is willing to accomodate site settings to allow for alternatives to Google Analytics (same goes for authentication, BTW): for the rest of us who do not accept to use Google, there are a few alternatives that would sit right there where Google is taking a lot of room in the Site Settings.
I understand there are constraints of market and such, but once in a while, it’s good to enable alternatives simply by allowing their presence as first-class citizens (oh, how this expression is already problematic…)
As a person who values the Internet to be more privacy-friendly, I’d love to see something like this as an option in Discourse core. I don’t know if Plausible Analytics would be the right choice for that, and @codinghorror is the one to make that call if we add this as a feature.
That being said, a theme component is always an option to start with.
If I get some spare cycles in the next couple of weeks, I’d like to take a crack at setting this up and writing the theme component. @hellekin I’ll let you know what happens!
What I really appreciate in the Plausible approach, beyond the AGPL license, is the minimalist approach. Where Matomo is trying to reproduce its proprietary competitor, Plausible recognized that it stands on a whole different playground where the incentive of surveillance and maximizing data capture is not relevant. From there Plausible can cut down the crap and deliver a lean version of what useful analytics can do with a minimum of resources.
It reminds me a bit of Nginx vs. Apache, where the former came to the world with 80% of what Apache could do, and because of this choice, rapidly became a game changer. The comparison ends here, but it’s important to realize, especially among the younger generation of developers, that aiming for less is often a great decision. (tip: Books by Basecamp)
