Recently I created this site just to write from time to time some info mainly related to computing and technology, I chose to use jekyll because it was made of static files and natively integrated with girhub, so it involves no maintenance and there is not surface attack.

I was looking to get some stats if people get interested by the two posts I wrote before :) so I started searching over the interweb to install google analytics script on the pages.

I first tried the jekyll-analytics plugin, but it did not work except on my laptop, whatever the configuration I tweaked.

Then a quick search on “jekyll google analytics” sends me to various sites (example), where you had to create template, add includes and modify layout, and whatsoever, which were too time consuming for the task.

Actually in 2024, there is a simpler version I discovered by grepping the source code of minima the default theme provided by Jekyll. Fist you need to use the branch master from git repository of the theme “minima”. To do this edit the file Gemfile in you site repository and replace the line

ruby gem "minima", "~> 2.5"

by

ruby gem "minima", git: 'https://github.com/jekyll/minima'

Then define your Google Analytics identifier, edit the file _config.yml to add a variable google_analytics: \<your-id\>

Now you need to edit Jekyll config file _config and add this

google_analytics: G-XXXXXXXXXX

Build your site, and you should see this piece of javascipt code in the <head> of each page.

<script>
if(!(window.doNotTrack === "1" || navigator.doNotTrack === "1" || navigator.doNotTrack === "yes" || navigator.msDoNotTrack === "1")) {
  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX', 'auto');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
}
</script>

note the script respects “DoesNotTrack” option set by browsers.