Privacy

This website is powered by Ghost, a free and open-source blogging platform developed by the non-profit Ghost Foundation. By default, Ghost does not use any tracking cookies of any kind, so it's been very easy to begin from a clean slate in terms of privacy.

Of course, I am interested in learning more about what kind of posts attract attention. However, that doesn't mean that I'm interested in invading your privacy by using creepy services like Google Analytics. So, I've switched to Fathom, a paid analytics service. Importantly, Fathom is entirely cookie-free. It provides answers to questions "how many people are on your site?" and "which site were they referred from?" but not to questions like "where is your visitor located?" and "what is the name of their network?"

Here's what Fathom has to say about it:

Here are just a few reasons why our customers enjoy using our software. Your friends might dig us too!

• You don't need to display those pesky cookie notices as we don't use cookies, nor do we track invasive data.
• We offer simple, straight-forward website analytics.
• We are focused on privacy for website visitors, we don't track them, save their personal information, or need it to be profitable.
• We have hundreds of customers and track tens of millions of page views per month, so we may be a small company, but we're doing big things.
• We can handle viral content without breaking a sweat, so your site won't slow down because of us, and we don't ever stop tracking you because of a spike in popularity.
• We've been featured in Fast Company as a great alternative to Google Analytics.
• All of our plans allow for unlimited websites to be tracked and receive our top-notch customer support.

We also find that telling your own story about why you like using Fathom can help boost referrals. Read about the details/rules of our affiliate program here.

The cheapest plan for Fathom runs $14/month, though Fathom co-founder Paul Jarvis has assured me that academic users can run Fathom for 25% off. (He immediately responded to my query on the subject!)

If you're interested in giving Fathom a try, you might consider using my referral link to get started.