I ve used Google Analytics for long enough to know that it doesn t work very well (issues on mobile phones and for people who ve disabled Javascript, WAY too much of a lag time in updating). Currently, I m just logging every request made of a page and updating a counter in my database, but I know that s inefficient and very crude (I m not distinguishing between people and bots, I m logging every page refresh as a new view).
What do you suggest for building a simple pageview counter? Another web analytics service? Writing my own counter that builds in rules like requiring that multiple pageviews from the same IP within 5 seconds of each other don t count? I ve seen some people recommend parsing my production logs - I m deploying on Heroku and don t have any idea where to start with that.
Thanks.