Self hosting Plausible with Caprover
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Plausible Analytics is a simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics.
They offer a free Plausible Analytics Self-Hosted, that it’s exactly the same code as their Cloud solution, but you have to install on your server.
As a fan of Caprover, that I use everyday to manage my web applications, and after looking at the official Caprover repository for one-click apps, I found that Plausible was missing, so I decided to write the template.
On their offical repository there is a docker-compose.yml file that I used as starting point to transform in a one-click Caprover app, but the GeoLite2 database created by MaxMind for enriching analytics data with visitor countries was not present.
So, looking at the self hosted guides available in their documentation, I came up with a plausible.yml template:
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| captainVersion: 4 | |
| services: | |
| $$cap_appname-mail: | |
| image: bytemark/smtp | |
| restart: always | |
| environment: | |
| RELAY_HOST: $$cap_RELAY_HOST | |
| RELAY_PORT: $$cap_RELAY_PORT | |
| RELAY_USERNAME: $$cap_RELAY_USERNAME | |
| RELAY_PASSWORD: $$cap_RELAY_PASSWORD | |
| caproverExtra: | |
| notExposeAsWebApp: "true" | |
| $$cap_appname-postgres: | |
| image: postgres:12-alpine | |
| volumes: | |
| - $$cap_appname-postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data | |
| environment: | |
| POSTGRES_USER: plausible | |
| POSTGRES_PASSWORD: $$cap_POSTGRES_PASSWORD | |
| caproverExtra: | |
| notExposeAsWebApp: "true" | |
| $$cap_appname-clickhouse: | |
| image: yandex/clickhouse-server:20.8.5.45 | |
| volumes: | |
| - $$cap_appname-clickhouse-data:/var/lib/clickhouse | |
| caproverExtra: | |
| notExposeAsWebApp: "true" | |
| $$cap_appname-geoip: | |
| image: maxmindinc/geoipupdate:v4.5 | |
| environment: | |
| GEOIPUPDATE_ACCOUNT_ID: $$cap_GEOIPUPDATE_ACCOUNT_ID | |
| GEOIPUPDATE_LICENSE_KEY: $$cap_GEOIPUPDATE_LICENSE_KEY | |
| GEOIPUPDATE_EDITION_IDS: GeoLite2-Country | |
| GEOIPUPDATE_FREQUENCY: 168 | |
| volumes: | |
| - $$cap_appname-geoip-data:/usr/share/GeoIP | |
| $$cap_appname: | |
| depends_on: | |
| - $$cap_appname-postgres | |
| - $$cap_appname-clickhouse | |
| - $$cap_appname-mail | |
| caproverExtra: | |
| containerHttpPort: "8000" | |
| dockerfileLines: | |
| - FROM plausible/analytics:v1.1.1 | |
| - CMD ["sh", "-c", "sleep 10 && /entrypoint.sh db createdb && /entrypoint.sh db migrate && /entrypoint.sh db init-admin && /entrypoint.sh run"] | |
| environment: | |
| ADMIN_USER_EMAIL: $$cap_ADMIN_USER_EMAIL | |
| ADMIN_USER_NAME: $$cap_ADMIN_USER_NAME | |
| ADMIN_USER_PWD: $$cap_ADMIN_USER_PWD | |
| BASE_URL: http://$$cap_appname.$$cap_root_domain | |
| DATABASE_URL: postgres://plausible:$$cap_POSTGRES_PASSWORD@srv-captain--$$cap_appname-postgres:5432/plausible | |
| CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL: http://srv-captain--$$cap_appname-clickhouse:8123/plausible | |
| SECRET_KEY_BASE: $$cap_gen_random_hex(64) | |
| SIGNING_SALT: $$cap_gen_random_hex(24) | |
| DISABLE_REGISTRATION: "true" | |
| DISABLE_SUBSCRIPTION: "true" | |
| MAILER_EMAIL: $$cap_RELAY_USERNAME | |
| SMTP_HOST_ADDR: srv-captain--$$cap_appname-mail | |
| SMTP_HOST_PORT: "25" | |
| GEOLITE2_COUNTRY_DB: "/geoip/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb" | |
| volumes: | |
| - $$cap_appname-geoip-data:/geoip | |
| caproverOneClickApp: | |
| variables: | |
| - defaultValue: "[email protected]" | |
| description: This is the admin email. Please change it. | |
| id: $$cap_ADMIN_USER_EMAIL | |
| label: ADMIN_USER_EMAIL | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - defaultValue: "admin" | |
| description: This is the admin username. Please change it. | |
| id: $$cap_ADMIN_USER_NAME | |
| label: ADMIN_USER_NAME | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - defaultValue: "password" | |
| description: This is the admin password. Please change it. | |
| id: $$cap_ADMIN_USER_PWD | |
| label: ADMIN_USER_PWD | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - defaultValue: "plausible" | |
| description: This is the PostgreSQL password for user 'plausible'. Please change it. | |
| id: $$cap_POSTGRES_PASSWORD | |
| label: POSTGRES_PASSWORD | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - defaultValue: "smtp.mailgun.org" | |
| description: This is the SMTP host for sending email. Use Mailgun or whatever other service. | |
| id: $$cap_RELAY_HOST | |
| label: RELAY_HOST | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - defaultValue: "587" | |
| description: This is the port for the SMTP host. Please change it if needed. | |
| id: $$cap_RELAY_PORT | |
| label: RELAY_PORT | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - description: This is the username for logging into the SMTP host. Please change it according to your host. | |
| id: $$cap_RELAY_USERNAME | |
| label: RELAY_USERNAME | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - description: This is the password for logging into the SMTP host. Please change it according to your host. | |
| id: $$cap_RELAY_PASSWORD | |
| label: RELAY_PASSWORD | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - description: Provide your own ACCOUNT_ID, you can sign-up at https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-services-and-databases | |
| id: $$cap_GEOIPUPDATE_ACCOUNT_ID | |
| label: GEOIPUPDATE_ACCOUNT_ID | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| - description: Provide the corresponding License Key for your own ACCOUNT_ID. | |
| id: $$cap_GEOIPUPDATE_LICENSE_KEY | |
| label: GEOIPUPDATE_LICENSE_KEY | |
| validRegex: /^([^\s^\/])+$/ | |
| instructions: | |
| start: >- | |
| Plausible is a lightweight and open-source website analytics tool. | |
| It doesn’t use cookies and is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU. | |
| This one click app uses the: | |
| - official image from https://hub.docker.com/r/plausible/analytics | |
| - https://hub.docker.com/r/bytemark/smtp, that allows linked containers to send outgoing email | |
| - official PostgreSQL image based on Alpine Linux | |
| - ClickHouse image https://hub.docker.com/r/yandex/clickhouse-server, an open-source column-oriented database | |
| - official image from https://hub.docker.com/r/maxmindinc/geoipupdate, the well known MaxMind GeoIP Update Tool. | |
| end: >- | |
| Plausible.io is deployed and available as $$cap_appname. | |
| In case you add a new domain to your application, remember to set the environment variable BASE_URL accordingly. | |
| IMPORTANT: It will take up to 2 minutes for Plausible to be ready. Before that, you might see 502 error page. | |
| displayName: Plausible | |
| isOfficial: false | |
| description: Plausible is a lightweight and open-source website analytics tool. | |
| documentation: Taken from https://plausible.io/. |
Simply copy and paste this template in Caprover, and you'll have a Plausible.io self hosted analytics application up and running!
Then follow their guide to add your first website, and copy the automatically generated snippet in the <head> tag of your website.
EDIT: as if today, 31/10/2020, the Plausible template is already available in the official repository. Simply search for the app inside Caprover installation:
Select an app name - can be plausible 😀 - and deploy!
