Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by ttd on Monday February 20, 2017 @10:14AM
(#13687901)
For such simple metrics (visitor count and referral), wouldn't it be possible to use server-side tracking, e.g. by parsing an Apache access log? Are there any packages out there to do simple analytics without requiring client-side tracking?
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by StavrosK on Monday February 20, 2017 @10:48AM
(#13688196)
I've actually writing a post these days about this exact thing: Analytics alternatives to Google Analytics that are more private, more accurate and faster. It's a very interesting topic, GoAccess is my software of choice but it has some odd UX that is currently being worked on by the maintainer.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by purrcat259 on Monday February 20, 2017 @01:06PM
(#13689443)
I recently started a small project similar to goaccess, which brings up some quick statistics from nginx access logs, though nothing as polished as that!
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by pwenzel on Monday February 20, 2017 @12:21PM
(#13689012)
Good point, but there are quite a few sites nowadays that are hosted on platforms with no immediate access to raw Apache logs, especially if your site is served by a CDN.
says:
"It's probably a bad idea to put confidential data in the URL anyway. It will be displayed in the browser's address bad too, remember? People don't like it if their password is visible to anyone who happens to glance at the screen"
you can just display a form with an input field for the secret key, which will be HTTP POSTed and only THEN you should display the account's data (while the url doesn't disclose the secret key)
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by bencollier49 on Monday February 20, 2017 @11:59AM
(#13688799)
But you've got the secret site key in your server logs as it's in all the GET statements. Don't use third-party log analysis would be the suggestion I suppose.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by iDemonix on Monday February 20, 2017 @11:01AM
(#13688313)
Out of interest is this just a permanent side project that's almost completed, or something you're hoping to grow and monetise?
Also, what stack are you using? I'm interested as I've been slowly designing my own mini project (with SaaS aspirations, SaaSpirations?) that does very similar metrics.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by foxhop on Monday February 20, 2017 @04:22PM
(#13691035)
I'm still running google analytics but I don't look at it anymore, the spam is unbearable and I don't have time to figure out how to create filters. Its not my problem to figure out either. I'm really excited for Mirrorshades. Keep it simple.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by fiatjaf on Monday February 20, 2017 @06:00PM
(#13691810)
I'm developing a simple web analytics also (it's strange to see Mirrorshades here since I started developing something like it some weeks ago) and I want to know about referral spam: Mirrorshades per se doesn't have any better spam filtering than Google Analytics, right? The gain from switching to it is just because spammers still don't know how to spam Mirrorshades, or am I wrong?
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by aparks517 on Monday February 20, 2017 @07:19PM
(#13692192)
Spammers are already doing what they do. I have rudimentary measures in place, but additional data will enable a more sophisticated response. I use the service myself and find spam to be crazy-making. So... ;)
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by fiatjaf on Monday February 20, 2017 @08:25PM
(#13692497)
How are they doing what they do? How could a spammer get to know Mirrorshades protocol to send a false referrer report (which is not the Referer header) in an AJAX request?
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by aparks517 on Monday February 20, 2017 @09:07PM
(#13692657)
At least some of them appear to use a more general-purpose method than that. They actually load pages and execute scripts with document.referrer and the Referrer header faked-up. Though it's presumably more resource-intensive, it has the benefit of working for a wide variety of analytics setups, both hosted and server-side.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by fiatjaf on Monday February 20, 2017 @10:31PM
(#13693040)
Oh, right, they just got document.referrer, I had forgotten about that.
What if the analytics server actually parsed the referring page to see if there's a real link there and only confirm the referrer after that? Isn't there a third party service that checks these things?
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by iDemonix on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @04:01AM
(#13694301)
If I send a manual PATCH of {"source":"referral-spam-here.com"}, obviously it makes it in to my metrics.
It seems like someone could just scan for sites with a site ID matching your format, then a quick burst of 100 PATCH requests and you're now experiencing the same stuff that makes Google Analytics so painful to use.
Do you have any plans to combat stuff like this? This is typically my biggest gripe with analytics platforms, the spam can make them unusable and is hard to protect against.
Does look nice and clean - but I would love to see a license, not just a copyright notice. I am unsure if such a short snippet really is copyrightable? It is tempting to just change the post url and whip up something simple for self-hosting... but tricky to do and redistribute as long as there is no license on the file. For such short snippets I would recommend cc0 - or perhaps bsd.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by TheFullStack on Monday February 20, 2017 @12:26PM
(#13689056)
The simplicity of this is pretty compelling. I use GA a lot and it can definitely be a time-sink. Mirror Shades may be a good alternative for beginners who are overwhelmed by GA or for simple landing sites that don't need the full GA suite right away. For my next landing page test, I'll try Mirror Shades out.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by idoco on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @04:13AM
(#13704234)
I really love the simplicity, I think I will use it for one of my side projects! (also here at Show HN)
Quick question, why did you choose to use a PATCH request and get involved with CORS issues, instead of injecting an image element with a tracking pixel (web beacon)?
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by thangngoc89 on Monday February 20, 2017 @09:47AM
(#13687638)
Ask HN: Is there any services that take my Google Analytics report and produce a simple report like this one? I may not need the full-blown report of GA right now but I guess I'll need it as some point in the future.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by mcescalante on Monday February 20, 2017 @09:59AM
(#13687770)
I have successfully used https://briefmetrics.com/ before with clients who couldn't be bothered to learn the GA dashboard and wanted reporting. I have also used the "email dashboard on a schedule" and made a simple dashboard but briefmetrics has a better experience.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by aparks517 on Monday February 20, 2017 @03:04PM
(#13690410)
Thank you! This was very helpful feedback. I added the async attribute to the script tag late in the game and didn't think about how it would interact with this. I've updated the agent script with a more robust method of finding the site ID and am deploying it now.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by assafmo on Thursday February 23, 2017 @04:21PM
(#13717897)
Awesome! I was just having problems opening a GA account and then I fount this Show HN.
This is exactly what I was looking for - fast and easy setup, updates instantly, simple and exactly the two metrics I am interested in.
I've already started using it and I'll send feedbacks along the way.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by thenomad on Monday February 20, 2017 @10:35AM
(#13688091)
Minimal and cool. Nice.
Some kind of top pages or top bounce rate stats would also be good. Usually I'm using analytics to figure out either a) what's working or b) what's broken.
Re:Show HN: Mirrorshades – Simple web analytics
by aparks517 on Monday February 20, 2017 @10:55AM
(#13688259)
I'm eager to keep that stats page small, but at the same time I'd like it to have what people need to see. So this feedback is particularly valuable to me and I've made a note of it. Thanks!
Goaccess is interesting in that it has both a live, terminal, curses interface as well as HTML output. https://goaccess.io
https://github.com/purrcat259/peek/
someone sniffing the network traffic can see the SECRET_SITE_KEY .. isn't it a security concern? or am i missing anything?
one of the comments of the question here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/499591/are-https-urls-enc...
says: "It's probably a bad idea to put confidential data in the URL anyway. It will be displayed in the browser's address bad too, remember? People don't like it if their password is visible to anyone who happens to glance at the screen"
you can just display a form with an input field for the secret key, which will be HTTP POSTed and only THEN you should display the account's data (while the url doesn't disclose the secret key)
Also, what stack are you using? I'm interested as I've been slowly designing my own mini project (with SaaS aspirations, SaaSpirations?) that does very similar metrics.
I just recently switch from GA to Gauges, because the referral spam and bloat was annoying me.
I'm definitely going to use this on my next project. Simple and beautiful.
Thanks for sharing!
What if the analytics server actually parsed the referring page to see if there's a real link there and only confirm the referrer after that? Isn't there a third party service that checks these things?
It seems like someone could just scan for sites with a site ID matching your format, then a quick burst of 100 PATCH requests and you're now experiencing the same stuff that makes Google Analytics so painful to use.
Do you have any plans to combat stuff like this? This is typically my biggest gripe with analytics platforms, the spam can make them unusable and is hard to protect against.
It seems to be small enough to not even link it but paste in the HTML (836 bytes uglified, supposedly golfable even further).
[0] http://getmirrorshades.com/agent.js
Does look nice and clean - but I would love to see a license, not just a copyright notice. I am unsure if such a short snippet really is copyrightable? It is tempting to just change the post url and whip up something simple for self-hosting... but tricky to do and redistribute as long as there is no license on the file. For such short snippets I would recommend cc0 - or perhaps bsd.
Quick question, why did you choose to use a PATCH request and get involved with CORS issues, instead of injecting an image element with a tracking pixel (web beacon)?
Alternatively a change in the way that the script element (and the siteId) is detected could be helpful (instead of lines 13, 14):
I've already started using it and I'll send feedbacks along the way.
Good luck!
Some kind of top pages or top bounce rate stats would also be good. Usually I'm using analytics to figure out either a) what's working or b) what's broken.
The only benefit I see is that Google doesn't have the data.