Rick Hellewell

<p>Google Analytics (GA) allows you to see what your visitors are doing on your site. The common installation is to run some JavaScript code in the client’s browser that reports back to GA. The problem with that is many ad-blockers will block that client-side (browser) action, resulting in incomplete GA data.</p>
<p>The Server Side Analytics plugin does all the work on your server. So GA is used on all site visits – even visitors using ad blocking. That gives you more accurate GA data.</p>
<p>Your site visitor’s IP address is anonymized (the last ‘octet’ is removed), so only the visitor’s city is known. The plugin only uses the client-side WordPress session ID, so complies with basic GDPR privacy, as long as your site has an acknowledged cookie policy. There is nothing additionally stored on the client side, so visitor privacy for this plugin and the generated analytics is assured.</p>
<p>All you need is a GA account – start here: https://www.google.com/analytics/ . Note that you will need to set up a “UA” type account. Help starts here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9306384?hl=en   Make sure you set up a “Universal Analytics” account – which will result in a UA-xxxxxxx-1 value to use in the plugin.</p>
<p>If you use Google Analytics, then you should be aware of their privacy policy, which could apply to your use of GA; see it here https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html . You may also need a cookie policy and acknowledgement displayed on your site.</p>
<p>We suggest that you consult with your legal advisor for specific methods and messages needed for GDPR compliance on your site. We provide no warranty or guarantee of GDPR compliance. We are not providing any legal advice. We are not responsible in any way for your use of our suggested GDPR solution. Your mileage may vary. Objects in mirror are closer than you expect. All aspirin is alike. Professional driver on a closed course.  Your mileage may vary.</p>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p>This plugin does not save any personal information on your server. It will store cookies on your visitor’s browsers. If you have enabled Google Analytics, it will also store a randomly-generated ID value as a cookie; there is no personal information associated with that cookie. The plugin does not share information with others.</p>


CellarWeb Server Side Analytics

Allows using Google Analytics via server-side request. Many ad blockers block client-side Google Analytics, resulting in incomplete values.

zenmarkup

anthonyzen

<p>Self-hosted website analytics for WordPress. All data is stored in your WordPress database and never sent to third-party services. The tracker is cookieless and loads no external resources, making the plugin GDPR, CCPA, and PECR friendly by default — no consent banner required.</p>
<p>Once activated, the plugin starts collecting anonymous visitor data and displays a full analytics dashboard inside WP Admin.</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Real-time visitor counter</li>
<li>Pageviews, unique visitors, bounce rate, and average session duration</li>
<li>Interactive SVG world map with zoom, pan, and country/city drill-down</li>
<li>UTM campaign tracking with automatic URL cleanup</li>
<li>Event tracking — outbound links, file downloads, mailto and tel clicks, 404 pages</li>
<li>Custom events via data attributes or JavaScript API</li>
<li>Smart insights — exit pages, dead pages, user journeys</li>
<li>24-hour peak activity chart</li>
<li>New vs repeat visitor breakdown (single vs multiple sessions in a day)</li>
<li>Device, browser, and operating system detection (server-side)</li>
<li>Weekly or monthly email reports</li>
<li>CSV export on every dashboard tab</li>
<li>Date range selector with custom ranges</li>
<li>Role-based dashboard access control</li>
<li>Configurable data retention (7–365 days)</li>
<li>IP exclusion list and admin traffic filtering</li>
<li>Bot traffic analysis</li>
</ul>
<h4>Privacy by design</h4>
<ul>
<li>No cookies, no localStorage, no sessionStorage</li>
<li>IP addresses are never stored — only an irreversible SHA-256 hash is used internally</li>
<li>Geolocation is resolved locally on your server (optional) — only country and city names are stored</li>
<li>No personal identifiers — no names, emails, or login state tracked</li>
<li>GDPR, CCPA, and PECR friendly by default</li>
</ul>
<h4>Zero external resources</h4>
<p>The admin dashboard loads no fonts from third-party CDNs, no remote scripts, and no external stylesheets. Every byte is served from your own server, so the admin’s IP address is never leaked to third parties while viewing analytics.</p>
<h4>Compatibility</h4>
<p>The tracking script is async, non-blocking, and under 5KB. It works with common caching and optimization plugins by using <code>admin-ajax.php</code> for data collection, which bypasses page caching.</p>
<h4>Who is it for?</h4>
<ul>
<li>Site owners who want analytics without a consent banner</li>
<li>GDPR-regulated businesses that need compliant analytics out of the box</li>
<li>Agencies managing multiple WordPress sites</li>
<li>Developers who prefer self-hosted, zero-dependency tooling</li>
</ul>
<p>Built by <a href="https://zenmarkup.com" rel="nofollow ugc">ZenMarkup</a>.</p>
<h3>External services</h3>
<p>This plugin connects to a single third-party service under the conditions described below. The connection can be fully disabled by toggling “Geolocation” off in Analytics <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> General. Visitor data is never sent to any third party.</p>
<h4>jsDelivr CDN (cdn.jsdelivr.net)</h4>
<p>When the geolocation feature is enabled, the plugin downloads a static IP geolocation database file from jsDelivr CDN about once per month. The database is hosted as a public npm package (dbip-city-lite) and contains no user-specific data — it is the same file served to every site that requests it.</p>
<p>What is sent: a standard HTTPS GET request from your server. No visitor data, site identifiers, or telemetry are included.<br />
What is received: a gzipped database file, approximately 19 MB (dbip-city-lite.mmdb.gz).<br />
When: shortly after the geolocation feature is first enabled, then approximately once per month via WP-Cron, and whenever an admin clicks the “Update database now” button on the Settings page.<br />
Where it is stored: wp-content/uploads/zenmarkup-pa/dbip-city-lite.mmdb (after extraction).</p>
<ul>
<li>Source URL: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/dbip-city-lite/dbip-city-lite.mmdb.gz</li>
<li>Service provider: jsDelivr — https://www.jsdelivr.com/ — Privacy policy: https://www.jsdelivr.com/terms/privacy-policy</li>
<li>Database provider: DB-IP — https://db-ip.com/ — License: CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)</li>
</ul>
<h4>No per-visitor external requests</h4>
<p>After the database has been downloaded, ALL geolocation lookups happen locally on your own server using the bundled MaxMind GeoIP2 PHP reader. Visitor IP addresses are NEVER transmitted to any external service.</p>
<p>To stop all external requests entirely, set “Geolocation” to OFF in Analytics <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> General. The plugin continues to work without country and city data.</p>
<h3>Development</h3>
<p>The plugin ships with both minified production bundles and their unminified sources, so every byte of JavaScript and CSS can be reviewed, studied, and modified without any external tooling. No remote repository or compilation step is required to inspect the code.</p>
<p>Shipped sources:</p>
<ul>
<li>admin/assets/js/src/ — ES module sources that esbuild bundles into admin/assets/js/dashboard.min.js (the single file loaded on the admin dashboard). A source map is also shipped as dashboard.min.js.map.</li>
<li>admin/assets/css/dashboard.css — unminified source for admin/assets/css/dashboard.min.css.</li>
<li>public/tracker.js — unminified source for public/tracker.min.js (the frontend beacon, <5KB).</li>
</ul>
<p>Rebuilding the minified bundles (optional):</p>
<ol>
<li>Install Node.js 18 or newer.</li>
<li>From the plugin directory run: npm install</li>
<li>Then run: npm run build</li>
</ol>
<p>The build script uses esbuild (a pure Node dependency declared in package.json) — no remote downloads at runtime, no other build tooling, no framework.</p>
<h3>Third Party Notices</h3>
<p>This plugin includes the following third-party assets.</p>
<h4>SVG World Map</h4>
<ul>
<li>File: admin/assets/svg/world-map.min.svg</li>
<li>Source: Simplemaps.com (https://simplemaps.com/resources/svg-maps), via sirLisko/world-map-country-shapes on GitHub (https://github.com/sirLisko/world-map-country-shapes)</li>
<li>License: MIT</li>
<li>Copyright: 2015 Pareto Software, LLC DBA Simplemaps.com</li>
</ul>
<p>MIT License text:</p>
<p>The MIT License (MIT)</p>
<p>Copyright (c) 2015 Pareto Software, LLC DBA Simplemaps.com</p>
<p>Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:</p>
<p>The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.</p>
<p>THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.</p>
<h4>DB-IP City Lite</h4>
<ul>
<li>File: downloaded into wp-content/uploads/zenmarkup-pa/dbip-city-lite.mmdb at runtime (not bundled in the plugin .zip)</li>
<li>Source: https://db-ip.com/db/lite.php (distributed via the dbip-city-lite npm package on jsDelivr CDN)</li>
<li>License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</li>
<li>Attribution: IP Geolocation by DB-IP — https://db-ip.com</li>
</ul>
<h4>GeoIP2 PHP API</h4>
<ul>
<li>Files: includes/vendor-scoped/GeoIp2/</li>
<li>Source: https://github.com/maxmind/GeoIP2-php</li>
<li>License: Apache License 2.0 — https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0</li>
<li>Copyright: 2013-2024 MaxMind, Inc.</li>
<li>Bundled with a prefixed namespace (ZMPA\Vendor\GeoIp2) so it cannot collide with other plugins shipping the same library.</li>
</ul>
<h4>MaxMind DB Reader</h4>
<ul>
<li>Files: includes/vendor-scoped/MaxMind/</li>
<li>Source: https://github.com/maxmind/MaxMind-DB-Reader-php</li>
<li>License: Apache License 2.0 — https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0</li>
<li>Copyright: 2014-2024 MaxMind, Inc.</li>
<li>Bundled with a prefixed namespace (ZMPA\Vendor\MaxMind) so it cannot collide with other plugins shipping the same library.</li>
</ul>


ZenMarkup Privacy Analytics

Cookie-free, self-hosted analytics for WordPress. GDPR-ready by default, no consent banner, no external services.

CellarWeb Server Side Analytics vs ZenMarkup Privacy Analytics