Re: Toolcounter – a privacy-friendly hit co unter for Toolforge tools

As a belated follow-up to this, I've created a new page draft where we can
hopefully start to provide more accessible guidance about the available
monitoring and analysis tools and best practices for tool developers:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Toolforge/Monitor_and_analyze_tools
(see task at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T433989).

Thanks for making and sharing awesome tools for tools :-)

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 12:24 AM Travis Briggs via Wikitech-l <
[email protected]> wrote:

> viewstoolforgeorgtools
>
> from the people who brought you expertsexchange.com (view stool for georg
> tools icymi)
>
> 😂
>
> Having people use your stuff is amazing! That's probably why all those
> weirdo non-technical editors contribute in the first place 🤔
>
> -Travis
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2026 at 9:01 PM rtnF via Wikitech-l <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Cool. Thank you for sharing this.
>>
>> It’s pretty motivating to know that somebody out there is actually using my
>> tools <https://rtnf.substack.com/p/viewstoolforgeorgtools> :)
>>
>> On Thu, May 21, 2026 at 11:46 PM Jinoy Tom Jacob via Wikitech-l <
>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> The toolviews API is cool. Have done a small attempt couple of months
>>> ago during a workshop for visulize the views based on this API at
>>> https://views.toolforge.org/tools/
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>>
>>> *Jinoy *
>>> Email: [email protected]
>>>
>>>
>>> *Please don’t print this e-mail unless you really need to.Every 3000
>>> sheets consume a tree. Conserve Trees for a better tomorrow!*
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 21 May 2026 at 22:11, Sohom Datta via Wikitech-l <
>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> @Bd808: Ooh, this is nice, I did not know about the existence of this
>>>> service!
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if there is an easy way for the tool view to tell if a view
>>>> was from a bot?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Sohom Datta
>>>> ---
>>>> Open-source contributor @Wikimedia
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, May 21, 2026 at 12:15 PM Bryan Davis via Wikitech-l <
>>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 11:45 PM Suyash Dwivedi via Wikitech-l
>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Hi everyone,
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I've always been curious about how many people actually visit my
>>>>> Toolforge tools - and I suspect I'm not alone. So I built Toolcounter (
>>>>> https://toolcounter.toolforge.org/), a lightweight, privacy-friendly
>>>>> hit counter designed specifically for Toolforge-hosted tools.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > What it tracks
>>>>> >
>>>>> > 📄 Page views - counted on every page load (including refreshes).
>>>>> Good for total traffic.
>>>>> > 👤 Sessions (unique visit approximation) — uses sessionStorage in
>>>>> the visitor's browser. First open in a tab = 1 session. Refresh = not
>>>>> counted again. New tab = counted again. No cookies, no IP, no personal data
>>>>> stored.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Both counts appear separately on the dashboard with a per-day bar
>>>>> chart.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Quick integration (replace YOUR_TOOL and PAGE)
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Option 1 - SVG badge (no JS, image only, shows page views):
>>>>> > <img src="
>>>>> https://toolcounter.toolforge.org/badge.php?tool=YOUR_TOOL&page=PAGE"
>>>>> alt="Page views">
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Option 2 - JS embed (shows both views + unique sessions):
>>>>> > 👁 Views: <span id="tc-views"></span>
>>>>> > 👤 Unique: <span id="tc-sessions"></span>
>>>>> > <script src="
>>>>> https://toolcounter.toolforge.org/embed.js.php?tool=YOUR_TOOL&page=PAGE
>>>>> "></script>
>>>>> >
>>>>> > An embed code generator is available on the homepage.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Privacy
>>>>> > The database stores zero personal data, only anonymous counters per
>>>>> (tool, page) pair. No cookies are set. No IP addresses, User-Agent strings,
>>>>> or usernames are ever written to the database. Full privacy policy:
>>>>> https://toolcounter.toolforge.org/privacy.php
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Source code is publicly available and open for audit.
>>>>>
>>>>> Seeing many flowers bloom is great. There is also a system you can use
>>>>> at https://toolviews.toolforge.org/api/ which attempts to count 2xx
>>>>> status responses ("hits") for all tools by parsing the access logs
>>>>> generated at the Toolforge reverse proxy service. That system does not
>>>>> currently have a nice UI, but it does have data going back to at least
>>>>> 2019 and does not require inserting tracking tokens in your pages.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bryan
>>>>> --
>>>>> Bryan Davis                                        Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>> Principal Software Engineer                               Boise, ID USA
>>>>> [[m:User:BDavis (WMF)]]                                      irc: bd808
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