Make inclusion of Matomo optional

[fiveop]

Currently, Matomo is always included when someone uses varnish. If the workbench is supposed to be used like the old template, in particular for lesson material listed on the community lessons, there will be other legal entities than the Carpentries that are responsible for hosting pages generated by the workbench suite. As it stands they have no option, but to include the Matomo tracking/analytics script. At least in the EU, to be diligent, they should check what kind of data this collects and I am not sure whether that is possible for anyone but the Carpentries.

[zkamvar]

For clarity, the matomo code you refer to exists here:

varnish/inst/pkgdown/templates/footer.html

Lines 33 to 51 in e9f5f87

	<!-- Matomo -->
	<script>
	var _paq = window._paq = window._paq || [];
	/* tracker methods like "setCustomDimension" should be called before "trackPageView" */
	_paq.push(["setDocumentTitle", document.domain + "/" + document.title]);
	_paq.push(["setDomains", ["*.lessons.carpentries.org","*.datacarpentry.github.io","*.datacarpentry.org","*.librarycarpentry.github.io","*.librarycarpentry.org","*.swcarpentry.github.io", "*.carpentries.github.io"]]);
	_paq.push(["setDoNotTrack", true]);
	_paq.push(["disableCookies"]);
	_paq.push(['trackPageView']);
	_paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']);
	(function() {
	var u="https://carpentries.matomo.cloud/";
	_paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'matomo.php']);
	_paq.push(['setSiteId', '1']);
	var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
	g.async=true; g.src='https://cdn.matomo.cloud/carpentries.matomo.cloud/matomo.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s);
	})();
	</script>
	<!-- End Matomo Code -->

@fmichonneau contributed this and can speak to how it works, but from what I understand it will only collect if a site is hosted on one of our official sites. The move to matomo was a strategic move to ensure that our lessons aligned with our privacy policy, which conforms to GDPR and CCPA. For what it's worth, this is not different to how the styles template is implemented.

Would it help if I included an optional yaml item in config.yaml called analytics that allows you to specify a custom analytics script (or nothing) if desired?

something like this to set the analytics to nothing:

analytics: '<!-- no analytics -->'

or like this to use your own analytics code.

analytics: |
  <!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
  <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id={YOUR TRACKING ID}"#' ></script>
  <script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());

  gtag('config', '{YOUR TRACKING ID}');
  </script>

[fiveop]

I found the code and it looked like it would only work on certain domains (as you now confirm). However, I think it would save users not belonging to the Carpentries some trouble, if they would not even have to think about it. So an option like you suggest would be really helpful. To prevent repetition in Carpentries hosted lessons you could have three options: none, carpentries, <custom>

[zkamvar]

I found the code and it looked like it would only work on certain domains (as you now confirm). However, I think it would save users not belonging to the Carpentries some trouble, if they would not even have to think about it. So an option like you suggest would be really helpful. To prevent repetition in Carpentries hosted lessons you could have three options: none, carpentries, <custom>

Hi @fiveop, sorry to take so long to address this. A while ago, I excluded the matomo code completely for the lesson and so there is no tracking at all. I think your solution fits well and I will implement it in May.

[zkamvar]

Just got the notification this was closed. Well done, @froggleston! It turns out that I didn't specify which May it would get implemented in 😅