May 4, 2021 Reading time: 1 min
There's no use beating around the bush here. You've read the title; you know what this is about. Starting today, I'm using GoatCounter for analytics, and utterances for comments.
The addition of analytics will likely displease some of the more privacy-minded of you, so this is in equal parts a warning. You may want to install an ad blocker if you don't like analytics services. In addition, rest assured that GoatCounter is acutely privacy-minded and open-source for any audits you may wish to perform.
So, why?
So far, many friends have visited my website, and I'm thankful for all their support. Probably, you, reading this right now, are one of my friends! And, in that case, hello! Thanks a lot for sticking with me and being a great person. I'm truly thankful to have you in my life. But, I digress – it'd be a little strange to compose an open letter about how grateful I am for my friendships.
But, I want to have a greater understanding of the scope of my site. I want to know how much traffic my site actually does get, who is visiting it, and how you guys feel about it. That's why I want to add comments and analytics. I feel like having this information at hand will give me a better idea what to focus on, what to improve, and a sense of perspective about my writing, as well – I want to know what I got right and, more importantly, wrong, and I'm hoping that exposing an interface to y'all to call me out will foster some productive discussions.
If you read the title of this article, you may have also noticed that I said something about the "path forwards". It may not have been clear what I meant by this. I want my personal site to be a place where I discuss serious matters in long form. Until now, I've dropped the occasional detailed thread on Twitter, but generally refrained from talking about serious things, including perspectives like my last article, and especially my political stances.
I want to start using this site to talk about serious things in detail, painting vivid perspectives that I hold on the world, and opening them to challenge. That's why I'm making these changes. I want to derive the same perspective from this site as I can from making a tweet, while not inundating my actual Twitter account with stuff most of you won't care about. Microblogging should be, well, micro, and this site shall be for the macro stuff.
That's all for now. Thanks for sticking with me; until next!
Tell me what I got right or wrong! Did this help you? Do you have any other questions or concerns? I'm all (elf) ears.