Static app platform site analytics

Heya, @1001105920ontarioltd

If you want server-side style analytics for an App Platform static site (without adding a JS snippet), your options are limited because App Platform’s static hosting doesn’t currently expose raw access logs/visitor-level data like “unique IPs, requests per IP, returning visitors, geolocation,” etc. The built-in Insights is basically the only “native” view.

If you need those metrics without frontend JS, the usual approach is to put the site behind something that does provide edge logs/analytics, for example:

You can host the static assets in Spaces and enable the CDN, then use CDN / edge analytics (or log export, depending on your CDN layer) to get request-level visibility. Alternatively, you can front the site with a dedicated reverse proxy (Nginx/Caddy) where you control access logs, but that means running a Droplet just for logging/analytics.

If you truly want “returning visitors” without JS, note that it’s inherently hard to do reliably from IP alone (NAT, mobile carriers, IPv6 privacy addresses), so most “returning visitor” definitions still rely on a cookie (which is basically JS or at least a dynamic response that can set one).

Hope that this helps!