Some of you will no doubt be familiar with Google Analytics or Matomo (formerly Piwik). They all have one thing in common: they collect data about users.
These statistics are very useful if you want to view the behavior of users on your own site and improve your site accordingly. You can no longer do without them if you want to understand your target group. Of course, you don't want to track your own page views.
Umami has set itself the goal of breaking the dependency on cloud solutions and wants to be a self-hosted alternative. You can find out exactly how this works with Umami and how to set up Umami in my article here.
Umami tracks my own views ❓
I also had to sadly experience that Umami also tracks my own views and thus falsifies the statistics, sometimes significantly. This is stupid, nobody wants it and nobody likes it.
Unfortunately, there is hardly any documentation on this and I first tried to dynamically add the tracking script using the referer information in the JavaScript. But that's code that needs to be maintained (albeit not much). I don't want that.
Unfortunately, the documentation is quite weak in this respect and didn't offer anything you might need.
The solution 💡
But after hours of searching in various forums and a lot of research, a GitHub issue appeared where the supposed solution was described:
umami-softwareThe solution is simple, but not intuitive. Simply set the entry umami.disabled with the value true in the localStorage in the browser (for the website) and Umami will no longer be tracked in the browser.
Why your own views skew statistics
Especially with smaller blogs or new projects, your own page views can make up a significant share of total traffic. When you view an article multiple times while writing, check the formatting, and review it again after publishing, you can easily rack up 20-30 views that have nothing to do with actual visitor interest.
Umami is a great privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It doesn't store personal data, doesn't set cookies, and is fully GDPR compliant. The self-hosting option also gives you full control over your data.
More Umami tips
In addition to hiding your own views, Umami also offers the ability to track custom events. For example, you can measure how often certain buttons are clicked or how far visitors scroll on a page – all without cookies and privacy-compliant.
Further reading
If you enjoyed this article, you might also find these interesting:
Discover more articles
Understanding and using REST APIs
You may have seen or heard that modern applications use REST APIs. I'll show you whats behind that 🤔
Automatically archive GitHub repos
Automatically archive your repos when they are outdated? I will show you how you can do it 🔥
CSS Grid: The Missing Counterpart to Flexbox 🧩
TL;DR: CSS Grid is the missing puzzle piece to your Flexbox knowledge. While Flexbox handles one-dimensional layouts, Grid gives you full control over rows AND columns simultaneously. This article covers everything from basics to subgrid – with practical examples you can use right away. You know Flexbox? Great. Time to
View Transitions API: Smooth Page Transitions Without a Framework ✨
TL;DR: The View Transitions API brings buttery-smooth page transitions directly to the browser - no framework, no JavaScript library needed. Just CSS and a few lines of JS. Here's how it works and why you should start using it today. 🤔 What Are View Transitions Anyway? You know
Playwright: E2E Testing Without the Headaches 🎭
TL;DR: Playwright is the most modern E2E testing framework and puts an end to flaky tests, complicated setups, and endless waiting. Auto-waiting, Trace Viewer, and native multi-browser support make it the best tool for reliable end-to-end tests. Here's why you should switch right now. 🤔 Why E2E Testing
Angular Signals: Reactive State Management Without RxJS 🚀
Angular Signals bring reactive state management without RxJS complexity. Learn signal(), computed(), and effect() for cleaner Angular code.