On 17 Dec 2012, at 12:49, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: On 12/17/2012 12:39 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote: Automagically generated charts. Analog, Webalizer...lots of others. All of them have been doing this for more than fifteen years. I know, but they need to be set up, which is slightly less automagic for a lazy sysadmin. ;) Setup is like five minutes. A sysadmin THAT lazy should not be trusted with root. I agree with that. I'm coming up with some ideas for helping someone migrate away from google analytics now. Seriously man. Also, some people prefer out-of-band analytics. I'd be fine with webaizer or analog personally, I have google analytics set up but i never use it. Mind I get about 1 hit/year... I'd like to see a convincing argument for running the analytics out-of-band. I can come up with some reasons, but they're not exactly /convincing/. Analytics data would be less susceptible to failure of personal infrastructure. (I've seen logging break firsthand before I don't get how I can manage to break logging). Some people just like to slow down page load time by requiring data be sent somewhere else. ;) Not trying to be argumentative...but too many people these days in this business insist on things for the sake of insisting on something, without anything to back them up. I am not accusing YOU of this of course, as you've mentioned that you don't use it. The only time I enjoy this is when I paid to clean up the resultant mess. ;) Google offers these services because they want any and all data that they can get their paws on. It is far from high-minded community service thinking. First they offer free email, now they've got your email. Next they offer free office "web apps", now they have your business documents. Now your web traffic stats. Which is why I want to migrate away from gmail. ;) Mind you, I don't think Google as a company is evil, but they employ a LOT of people, and a LOT of people have access to those databases. Further, Google has a history of just rolling over when the federal government demands information. Oh noes! The government knows that I sometimes visit my website with IE 3. ;) (I see the problem here, just needed to make a joke) I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind being comfortable with this, especially when respectable, self-contained, state-of-the-art network services can be set up with 100% free software on hardware that can be picked up on the curb on trash day. I'm definitely losing the appeal of the google kook-aid, ;) </soapbox> -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA