Surface shortlink usage metrics using commodity metrics tools

[patcon]

Some 🔍 facts / ❤️ feelings / 💡 ideas about this:

• ❤️ I feel proud of our custom shortlink tool, and don't wish to use any other.
• 🔍 Clients/collaborators have expressed enthusiasm for our shortlink tool/practices.
• ❤️ I feel eager to share our shortlink tool/practices with others at some point.
• ❤️ I feel curious to have insight into which of own links are being relied upon, like we'd have with hosted shortlink services (e.g., Rebrandly).
• ❤️ I feel that such metrics would increase the value of offering this tool to others, as it validates it's being used.
• 🔍 Google Analytics has a "Universal Event" feature that allows collecting metrics on arbitrary events (e.g., clicks, redirects, any server/client event, etc.)
• ❤️ I prefer to avoid Google products for Hypha stuff.
• ❤️ I feel willing to use GA for a quick live test, and migrate to self-hosted analytics later.
• 💡 We could use GA events to get metrics about shortlink usage with a small amount of code/effort.
• 💡 We could set a deadline after which GA must be either removed or moved to a more value-aligned metrics tool.

Thoughts?

[YurkoWasHere]

Log parser could do the work without client side tracking
cat /var/log/nginx/link.hypha.coop_access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c

      6 /
      1 /2020-09-30-operations.html
      1 /2021-02-25-business-planning.html
      1 /2021-03-11-business-planning.html
      3 /calendar
      1 /calls
      1 /compost-newsletter
      2 /crm
      1 /cron
      1 /drive
      1 /email?lang=lv
      1 /favicon.ico
      1 /handbook
      1 /holidays.html
      1 /hyphacoop/configurations/branches
      4 /invoices
      1 /meetcoop
      1 /newfeelingcoop
      1 /ontario-coop-requirements.md
      1 /payroll
      1 /projection
      1 /reimbursement
      6 /robots.txt
      1 /shortlinks
      1 /standup-template
      1 /tasks
      1 /wordpress/