I came across an article1 that explained how to do basic analytics leveraging nginx’s access log.
This website is hosted on Firebase. Given the low to non-existent traffic on this blog, I have been happy with its free tier offering. And as a result, I never really felt the a need to look back in the direction of self hosting.
I have been running Google Analytics to track visitor count on this website. And have felt that the dashboard is kind overwhelming2. Needless to say that I rarely look at the metrics. Since getting hung up on numbers is a sure shot way to get demotivated and stop what I like doing(which is writing3).
But the blog post on gathering minimal metrics is making me look back in the direction of self hosting. With self hosting I can follow the approach suggested and get the minimalistic metrics/statistics that I require for my website. I think all I really want to track or know is the visitor count, which pages get most requests, user agent and referrers.
I am not fully convinced yet If I want to pay $5/month just to move away from Google Analytics. But in time if there are more of such reasons I might give in and consider self hosting.