How I Got Real Analytics with Plausible Without Crashing My Site

Last updated on 09 Jun 2025

Plausible Web Analytics

Yep, this time I didn’t nuke the server.

After nearly deleting my entire blog the first time I tried self-hosting Plausible, you’d think I’d be too scared to touch it again. But no. I went back in — this time to actually add the tracking script to my website and start collecting real, useful analytics.

Spoiler: it worked.

Here’s how I did it (with screenshots, because I’m not making this mistake twice).

Before You Ask: “But How Did You Set Up Plausible in the First Place?”

Great question.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I wrote another post where I explain how I self-hosted Plausible Analytics using Docker and Caddy — completely free (and how I almost deleted my entire blog in the process 😅):

Read that one if you want to get your own analytics dashboard running without giving all your data to Google.

Step 1: Open the Plausible Dashboard and Add Your Domain

I logged into my Plausible Panel (self-hosted, because It's Free This Way!) and clicked that little “Add a website”button.

Plausible Web Analytics Login Panel — Plausible Login Panel

I entered my domain — in this case, citynomadz.org — and left everything else at default.

Adding Domain to Plausible Web Analytics Dashboard — Adding Domain in Plausible Dashboard

That’s it. Domain added.

Step 2: Copy the Tracking Script

After adding the domain, Plausible gave me a snippet like this:

<script defer data-domain="citynomadz.org" src="https://plausible.citynomadz.org/js/script.js"></script>

Plausible told me to paste it into the <head> of my HTML. Cool. Simple enough, right?

Step 3: Paste It Into My Flask App

Since I’m using Flask, I opened my base.html file — the template that all my pages extend.

I dropped the script right before the closing </head> tag:

<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title>{% block title %}CityNomadz{% endblock %}</title>
  ...
  <script defer data-domain="citynomadz.org" src="https://plausible.citynomadz.org/js/script.js"></script>
</head>

After this you have to restart your docker container:

docker compose restart container-name

If you don’t use base.html, you’ll need to paste it in every file that has a <head> section. Or… you should really be using a base template.

Your future self will thank you.

Step 4: Restart and Test

I restarted the Flask app, cleared the cache, and visited the site.

Then I went back to Plausible, clicked “Verify installation” — and boom, it worked. 🎉

Step 5: Real-Time Analytics Joy

Now I can see:

How many people are visiting my site (hi, mom & dad!)
Which blog posts are most read
Which countries my visitors are from (Armenia? UAE? Slovenia or elsewhere?)

Plausible Web Analytics Dashboard and data — Plausible Dashbord

It’s clean, fast, privacy-respecting, and doesn’t feel like Google is watching everything I do.

Final Thoughts

Adding Plausible to your site is actually easy — as long as you don’t delete your blog in the process.

I now use it on all my sites (yes, including pycoin24.com). It just works.

If you’re building your own personal blog, portfolio, or side project, Plausible is a great alternative to Google Analytics — especially if you care about privacy.

Until next time. I promise not to delete my server again.