How to Install GoatCounter on FreeBSD Latest

GoatCounter is an open-source website analytics platform that is designed to protect user privacy. It is compatible with FreeBSD Latest version and can be easily installed on your server. In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to install and configure GoatCounter on FreeBSD Latest.

Prerequisites

  • A FreeBSD Latest server with root access
  • SSH client installed on your local machine

Step 1: Install Dependencies

First, we need to install some necessary dependencies for GoatCounter to work correctly.

  1. Log in to your server via SSH as root.

  2. Run the following command to update the package repository and install the dependencies:

pkg update && pkg install -y postgresql13 git ca_root_nss
  1. Start and enable the PostgreSQL server by running the following command:
sysrc postgresql_enable="YES" && service postgresql initdb && service postgresql start

Step 2: Clone and Configure GoatCounter

Next, we need to clone the GoatCounter repository and configure it.

  1. Change to the root directory:
cd ~
  1. Clone the GoatCounter repository by running the following command:
git clone https://github.com/zgoat/goatcounter.git
  1. Change to the GoatCounter directory:
cd goatcounter
  1. Use the following command to build and install GoatCounter:
make
  1. Copy the default configuration file and make necessary adjustments:
cp config.example.yml config.yml
  1. Open up the config.yml file with your favourite text editor:
nano config.yml

  1. Update the listen option to listen only to local connections by replacing http://0.0.0.0:8080 with http://127.0.0.1:8080.

  2. Update the dsn option to use the passwordless authentication method by replacing dbname=goatcounter user=goatcounter password=somethingsupersecret with host=/var/run/postgresql dbname=goatcounter sslmode=disable.

  3. Save and close the file.

Step 3: Run GoatCounter

We are ready to run GoatCounter!

  1. Use the following command to start GoatCounter:
./goatcounter serve --listen http://127.0.0.1:8080
  1. Open up your web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8080 to see the GoatCounter UI.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed GoatCounter on your FreeBSD Latest server. You can now use GoatCounter to track your website's analytics while ensuring user privacy.