After thinking abut the implications of using Disqus and Google Analytics I decied that I needed to switch over to something better and preferably open source.
I settled on Utterances and Fathom Analytics respectively. Now the entire blog relies on the amazing open source projects that are powering it, I’ve already talked about the other components that I use.
Utterances
I even mentioned that the swtich is possible in my meta-blog post. The selling point for me was the fact that the comments are simply stored as GitHub issues on the repository that this page is already being hosted on. So there is no concern about some third party potentially losing your data or ceasing operation.
It provides some nice peace of mind while also making this blog all the more nerdy, which I like.
Fathom Analytics
The swtich to Fathom was a simple one. No longer do I have to sell my soul to Google, I can just spin up a small server and off I go getting the same basic data I wanted. They do offer a paid service, which is definitely worth the money for larger organizations, but I do not need that level of control. Setup was quite simple and allows me to see how many users as viewing what pages.
I would absolutely reccomend making the switch away from Google Analytics as this provides the level of detail that a site admin needs. There is no reason to have session recorders or other invasive trackers for your website, especailly if all you have is a blog or other simple website.