cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/46782639
Goatcounter is so minimal that it takes a minute to wrap the brain around, but the good news is that it tracks all access anonymously, which is all I ever wanted (and why I simply have never made real use of Matomo over the years). It is the digital equivalent of a step counter, and acts like those counting clickers they use at concerts to track number of attendants.
It is good to confirm people are actually able to access tooling. That is all I need.
Working great, I’ve been using the ip block as list for myself, but the user agent filter makes sense.
Glad it works for you! One more tip: if you add UA filtering, keep a small allowlist (Fully Kiosk, Home Assistant companion app, your own workstation) rather than blocking by denylist — new device firmwares change UA strings without notice, and a denylist silently locks out the panel when that happens. Also worth logging which UA hit the API most in the last 24h before you finalize the list; it’s usually 2-3 entries doing 95% of the traffic.