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My web hosting provider gives me access to some old-school tools, like AWStats, for seeing activity on the site, but I was looking for something different. The free analytics tools are of course a privacy nightmare, so I knew I wouldn’t use them. The more privacy-friendly options tend to require self-hosting or paying a rather high monthly fee for something that’s really just a hobby. Enter GoatCounter. The developer has the right idea about counting visits and page views rather than trying to do some deep analysis on visitor behavior....

It annoys me to no end when sites insist on connecting to Google analytics or Facebook. I realized that the widgets from Odesli that let you link to a song on various streaming services was using Google analytics and Facebook events. I stripped those out of my posts and changed over to Songwhip, which seems to do the same thing but without trying to talk to Google or Facebook (but also without the widget)....

After the initial site setup way back in April 2020, I ran into problems I couldn’t resolve with my original flat-file CMS, Bludit. So, I finally made the jump to a static site generator, Hugo. I am a fan. And, this PaperMod theme really seems to be fairly feature-rich yet light and privacy friendly. Now I can’t use technical problems as an excuse for not posting.

Update 2/19/2021: The site is now build with Hugo and the PaperMod theme. The main principles below still apply. I started webonaire many years ago when I was learning linux and playing around with web servers and hosting. The name is a play on debonaire, with the intention of communicating some sort of skill or sophistication with the World Wide Web. Get it? The domain name has sat, unused, for more years than I care to admit....