Plausible Analytics is a privacy-friendly website analytics tool that provides website owners with insights about their website traffic without collecting any personal data from their visitors. It is an open-source web analytics platform that emphasizes user privacy and simplicity.
Plausible Analytics offers several features and benefits. some of which include:
- Lightweight: Plausible Analytics works by loading a script on your website, like Google Analytics.
- Email or Slack reports: Keep an eye on your traffic with weekly and/or monthly email or Slack reports.
- Clutter Free: Plausible Analytics provides simple web analytics and it cuts through the noise.
- Open website stats: You have the option to be transparent and open your web analytics to everyone.
- SPA support: Plausible is built with modern web frameworks in mind and it works automatically with any pushState-based router on the front end.
- Search keywords: Integrate your dashboard with Google Search Console to get the most accurate reporting on your search keywords.
- GDPR/CCPA/PECR compliant: Measure traffic, not individuals.
Plausible Analytics can be deployed in two ways:
- Managed service in the Cloud: This is the easiest method to run Plausible.
- Self-hosted: With this method, you do it all yourself.
In this guide, we will learn how to install and run Plausible Analytics in a Docker container – An alternative to Google Analytics.
1 – Install Docker Container Engine
To deploy a self-hosted Plausible, you need to have:
- CPU with x86_64 architecture
- Minimum of 4GB of RAM but the requirements will depend on your site traffic.
- Docker Engine installed. This can be achieved using the guide:
Follow our guide below to install Docker Engine.
Verify the installation:
$ docker version
Client: Docker Engine - Community
Version: 23.0.6
API version: 1.42
Go version: go1.19.9
Git commit: ef23cbc
Built: Fri May 5 21:19:37 2023
OS/Arch: linux/amd64
Context: default
Server: Docker Engine - Community
Engine:
Version: 23.0.6
API version: 1.42 (minimum version 1.12)
Go version: go1.19.9
Git commit: 9dbdbd4
Built: Fri May 5 21:18:11 2023
OS/Arch: linux/amd64
Experimental: false
containerd:
Version: 1.6.21
GitCommit: 3dce8eb055cbb6872793272b4f20ed16117344f8
runc:
Version: 1.1.7
GitCommit: v1.1.7-0-g860f061
docker-init:
Version: 0.19.0
GitCommit: de40ad0Add your system user to the Docker group:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp dockerYou also need to have Docker-compose installed:
Next install git
### Debian / Ubuntu ###
sudo apt update && sudo apt install git vim
### RHEL based systems ###
sudo yum -y install vim git2 – Configure Plausible Analytics Container
First, we will clone the hosting repo which has everything required to spin the container. To access the repo, click on plausible/hosting. You can also clone into this repo as shown;
cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/plausible/hosting plausibleNavigate into the created directory:
cd plausibleWe need to make adjustments to the plausible-conf.env which contains variables for the container. First, generate a random hash string:
openssl rand 64 | base64 -w 0 ; echoCopy this base64 string and use it in the next step. Open the file for editing:
vim plausible-conf.env In the opened file, modify the below values:
BASE_URL=http://your_domain_here
SECRET_KEY_BASE=paste_your_random_characters_here
ADMIN_USER_EMAIL=your_email_here
ADMIN_USER_NAME=admin_username
ADMIN_USER_PWD=admin_passwordOnce the desired modifications have been made, save and exit. You can also modify the docker-compose file.
vim docker-compose.ymlBy default the service will bind to all network interfaces. You can limit to specific IP address or localhost by editing ports section.
ports:
- 127.0.0.1:8000:80003 – Run Plausible in Docker Containers
Now you can start the containers using the command:
docker compose up -dSample Output:
[+] Running 30/7
✔ mail 3 layers [⣿⣿⣿] 0B/0B Pulled 11.1s
✔ plausible_db 8 layers [⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿] 0B/0B Pulled 17.3s
✔ plausible_events_db 7 layers [⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿] 0B/0B Pulled 32.6s
✔ plausible 8 layers [⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿] 0B/0B Pulled 13.5s
[+] Running 7/7
✔ Network plausible_default Created 0.1s
✔ Volume "plausible_db-data" Created 0.0s
✔ Volume "plausible_event-data" Created 0.0s
✔ Container plausible-plausible_db-1 Started 1.4s
✔ Container plausible-plausible_events_db-1 Started 1.2s
✔ Container plausible-mail-1 Started 1.3s
✔ Container plausible-plausible-1 Started 1.9sYou can verify if the containers are running:
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
6c873bd012a6 plausible/analytics:latest "/entrypoint.sh sh -…" About a minute ago Up About a minute 127.0.0.1:8000->8000/tcp hosting-plausible-1
19d50aca783a postgres:14-alpine "docker-entrypoint.s…" About a minute ago Up About a minute 5432/tcp hosting-plausible_db-1
2cfe699c4559 clickhouse/clickhouse-server:22.6-alpine "/entrypoint.sh" About a minute ago Up About a minute 8123/tcp, 9000/tcp, 9009/tcp hosting-plausible_events_db-1
7ba33e34f3a4 bytemark/smtp "docker-entrypoint.s…" About a minute ago Up About a minute 25/tcp hosting-mail-1You can also verify if the homepage is accessible:
$ curl http://localhost:8000
<html><body>You are being <a href="/register">redirected</a>.</body></html>Or access with system IP address: http://serverip:8000
4 – Configure Nginx Reverse Proxy
Now we will use Nginx as the reverse proxy server to improve performance by offloading caching, compression, and static file serving to a more efficient process.
First, ensure that Nginx is installed on your system
##On Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx -y
##On RHEL/Rocky Linux/Alma Linux
sudo yum install nginx -yOnce installed, allow HTTP and HTTPS through the firewall:
##For UFW
sudo ufw allow "Nginx Full"
##For Firewalld
sudo firewall-cmd --add-service={http,https} --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reloadNow create the virtual host file:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/plausible.confIn the file, add the below lines:
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name plausible.computingforgeeks.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/plausible.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/plausible.error.log;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}
}Remember to replace plausible.computingforgeeks.com with your domain name. Save the file and restart the service.
sudo systemctl enable --now nginx5 – Configure SSL for Plausible Analytics
It is recommended that you access Plausible via HTTPS. For this reason, we can obtain certificates for our domain name. If you have a fully qualified domain name, you can easily obtain certificates using Let’s Encrypt. For this guide, we will use self-signed certs.
Create a config:
$ vim plausible_ssl.conf
[req]
default_bits = 2048
default_keyfile = plausible_ssl.key
distinguished_name = req_distinguished_name
req_extensions = req_ext
x509_extensions = v3_ca
[req_distinguished_name]
countryName = Country Name (2 letter code)
countryName_default = KE
stateOrProvinceName = State or Province Name (full name)
stateOrProvinceName_default = Nairobi
localityName = Locality Name (eg, city)
localityName_default = Nairobi
organizationName = Organization Name (eg, company)
organizationName_default = plausible
organizationalUnitName = organizationalunit
organizationalUnitName_default = Development
commonName = Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name)
commonName_default = Your_IP-Address
commonName_max = 64
[req_ext]
subjectAltName = @alt_names
[v3_ca]
subjectAltName = @alt_names
[alt_names]
DNS.1 = localhost
DNS.2 = Your_IP-AddressReplace your IP address, Common Name and proceed to generate the certs.
openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout plausible_ssl.key -out plausible_ssl.crt -config plausible_ssl.confCopy the generated certs to the /etc/ssl/certs:
sudo cp plausible_ssl.crt /etc/ssl/certs/plausible_ssl.crt
sudo mkdir -p /etc/ssl/private/
sudo cp plausible_ssl.key /etc/ssl/private/plausible_ssl.keyNow adjust your config:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/plausible.confAdd the lines below in the server block and modify the HTTPS port:
server {
listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;
server_name plausible.computingforgeeks.com;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/plausible_ssl.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/plausible_ssl.key;
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.1 TLSv1;
access_log /var/log/nginx/plausible.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/plausible.error.log;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000/;
index index.html index.htm;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}
}Restart the Nginx service:
sudo systemctl restart nginx6 – Access Plausible Analytics Web Interface
Now you are set to access the Plausible web interface using the URL https://domain_name
Once authenticated, you will see a prompt to get your first website set up with Plausible.
You will be provided with a JavaScript snippet to integrate into your website. Then you can start collecting the data.
This script needs to be added to your site’s HTML code before you view the collected metrics. Now Plausible is waiting for any visits to the set website.
7 – Test Plausible Analytics on Linux
The Plausible Events API can be used to record page views and custom events. This is useful when tracking Android or iOS mobile apps, or for server-side tracking.
In most scenarios, it is recommended to install Plausible through the provided script or one of the many integration packages listed on the site here. However, if there’s no easy way for you to integrate with Plausible, you can still do so by sending events directly to the API.
It is important to take note of the two key headers which are used for unique visitor counting. Thes are:
- The User-Agent header
- The X-Forwarded-For header
So we will send some test traffic to our site using the command:
curl -ivk -X POST https://plausible.computingforgeeks.com/api/event \
-H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.121 Safari/537.36 OPR/71.0.3770.284' \
-H 'X-Forwarded-For: 127.0.0.1' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{"name":"pageview","url":"https://test.computingforgeeks.com","domain":"test.computingforgeeks.com"}'Once the traffic has been sent, you will see the Plausible web update as shown:
Conclusion
Today, we have learned how to install Plausible Analytics on Linux – An alternative to Google Analytics. You can now track website traffic, and collect only essential data like page views, unique visitors, bounce rates, and referrers using the self-hosted Plausible Analytics.
See more:
- How To Easily Learn Data Analytics in Python
- Using Proxies to Generate Better Results in Advanced Data Analytics
- How To Learn and Configure Google Analytics in 5 minutes
