aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/build/self-hosting-fathom/index.html
blob: a1d125f9f4473eaa171c92564b9bdf2c85cb7366 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
	<link rel="icon" href="data:,">
	<title>Self-Hosting Fathom Analytics with DigitalOcean</title>
	<link href="/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for blog posts" />
	<link href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for blog posts" />
<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style>
</head>

<nav>
	<a href="#menu">Menu &darr;</a>
</nav>

<main>
<h1 id="self-hosting-fathom-analytics-with-digitalocean">Self-Hosting Fathom Analytics with DigitalOcean</h1>

<p>2021-02-02</p>

<p>Since my previous post walked through the process of setting up Fathom PRO on Netlify, I figured it made sense to create a similar tutorial for the &#8220;Lite&#8221; variation, self-hosted on DigitalOcean.</p>

<p>Please note that while I think the PRO version of Fathom Analytics is truly great, for my small, niche blog it seemed overkill compared to self-hosting. Switching over from $14&#47;mo to $5&#47;mo while retaining most of the same functionality was a no-brainer. Choose the option that best suits your needs (or in the case - budget &#38; bandwidth).</p>

<p>With that cleared up - let&#8217;s get into it!</p>

<h2 id="prerequisites">Prerequisites</h2>

<ol>
<li>One or more website(s) where you would like to include analytics</li>
<li>DigitalOcean account (<strong>this link will give you a $100 credit!</strong>)</li>
<li>Positive attitude and passion for privacy-respecting analytics!</li>
</ol>

<h2 id="create-a-droplet">Create a Droplet</h2>

<p>Once your DigitalOcean account is setup, navigate to the Marketplace and search for <code>Fathom Analytics</code>. Then click the <code>Create Fathom Analytics Droplet</code>.</p>

<p>From here you&#8217;ll be brought to a page that allows you to customize the specifications of your new droplet. If you&#8217;re a smaller traffic site (personal blog, etc) selecting the <strong>$5&#47;month</strong> Basic Shared CPU option is your best bet.</p>

<p>Select the data-center region based on where most of your traffic originates from. I would suggest enabling <code>IPv6</code> and setting up your authentication via SSH instead of a regular password system. Adding backups is entirely at your own discretion.</p>

<p>Once you&#8217;re ready, click <strong>Create Droplet</strong>.</p>

<h2 id="enter-the-matrix-not-really">Enter the Matrix (not really)</h2>

<p>Once DigitalOcean finishes spinning up your new droplet, open a terminal and connect to it by entering:</p>

<pre><code>ssh root@YOUR_DROPLET_IP
</code></pre>

<p>If you setup your login via SSH everything should work as-is. If you went the password route, you&#8217;ll given a prompt to enter it.</p>

<p>Now that you&#8217;re connected, Fathom will guide you through a simple configuration setup. It&#8217;s fairly straightforward and painless. Once complete, move to the next step.</p>

<h2 id="domains">Domains</h2>

<p>You&#8217;ll most likely want to host this instance on your own domain or subdomain - instead of connecting directly via the droplet&#8217;s <code>IP</code>. Head over to your <strong>Networking</strong> page in the sidebar of DigitalOcean and add your custom domain.</p>

<p>Then, click on that newly added domain - we need to add some new records. You&#8217;re going to add two new <code>A</code> records to this domain:</p>

<p>The last thing you need to do is set your nameservers to point to DigitalOcean:</p>

<pre><code>ns1.digitalocean.com
ns2.digitalocean.com
ns3.digitalocean.com
</code></pre>

<p>Give it some time to propagate and you&#8217;ll be in business!</p>

<h2 id="ssl-ftw">SSL FTW</h2>

<p>There is hardly a good reason not to practice security on the web, so setting up your new analytics to be served over <code>HTTPS</code> is just the smart thing to do. Did I mention that this is completely free as well? See - no excuses.</p>

<p>In order to get a free SSL certificate setup, you&#8217;ll need to install <code>certbot</code>. While connected to your droplet, enter the following:</p>

<pre><code>sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
</code></pre>

<p>Once installed, enter the following to setup SSL (remember to swap out the domain with your own):</p>

<pre><code>certbot --nginx -d your-cool-domain.com
</code></pre>

<p>Follow the steps (it&#8217;s very quick and easy) and you&#8217;ll have <code>HTTPS</code> setup in a jiffy!</p>

<h2 id="the-final-lap">The Final Lap</h2>

<p>The last thing to do is login to your newly self-hosted Fathom instance, add your site you wish to track, grab the generated tracking code and then slap that badboy on whatever pages you need to track!</p>

<p>Congrats! You&#8217;re now officially running your own set of analytics tools. You should be happy about what you&#8217;ve accomplished and proud for respecting your users&#8217; privacy!</p>
<footer role="contentinfo">
    <h2>Menu Navigation</h2>
    <ul id="menu">
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li>
        <li><a href="/uses">Uses</a></li>
        <li><a href="/wiki">Wiki</a></li>
        <li><a href="/resume">Resume</a></li>
        <li><a href="/colophon">Colophon</a></li>
        <li><a href="/now">Now</a></li>
        <li><a href="/donate">Donate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/atom.xml">RSS</a></li>
        <li><a href="#top">&uarr; Top of the page</a></li>
    </ul>
    <small>
        Built with <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/barf">barf</a>. <br>
        Maintained with ♥ for the web. <br>
        Proud supporter of <a href="https://usefathom.com/ref/DKHJVX">Fathom</a> &amp; <a href="https://nextdns.io/?from=74d3p3h8">NextDNS</a>. <br>
        The content for this site is <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA</a>.<br> The <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht">code for this site</a> is <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht/tree/master/item/LICENSE">MIT</a>.
    </small>
</footer>