Proxy

Download PDF

Concerned about your website visitors’ privacy when using Simple Analytics? We understand. Let’s be clear: we never collect your visitors’ IP addresses. And with our proxy setup option using Caddy, NGINX, Netlify, or Vercel, you have the power to ensure those IP addresses never reach us. This setup acts as a privacy shield, keeping your visitors’ IP addresses from reaching external services.

If Caddy is your tool of choice, you can quickly set it up as a proxy with just a few lines in your Caddyfile. If you’re using NGINX, you can do something similar by adding some configuration to your server directive. And if you’re on Netlify or Vercel, you can set up a proxy by adding redirect rules to your site’s configuration. This lets analytics traffic go through your site before reaching us.

Setting up a proxy means no visitor IPs get to our servers. It’s an easy and effective step for protecting privacy. We highly recommend it if you can do it.

Step 1: Set up proxy

location /simple/ {
  proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
  proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-Proto-Version $http2;
  proxy_set_header  Host $http_host;
  proxy_set_header  X-NginX-Proxy true;
  proxy_set_header  Connection "";
  proxy_pass_request_headers on;
  proxy_pass https://queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com/;
}

location = /proxy.js {
  expires 7d;
  add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains" always;
  proxy_pass https://simpleanalyticsexternal.com/proxy.js?hostname=example.com&path=/simple;
}

location = /auto-events.js {
  expires 7d;
  add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains" always;
  proxy_pass https://scripts.simpleanalyticscdn.com/auto-events.js;
}

example.com {
  handle /simple/* {
    uri strip_prefix /simple
    reverse_proxy https://queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com {
      header_up X-Caddy-Proxy "true"
      header_up -X-Forwarded-For
    }
  }
  handle /proxy.js {
    rewrite * /proxy.js?{query}&hostname=example.com&path=/simple
    reverse_proxy https://simpleanalyticsexternal.com {
      header_up -X-Forwarded-For
    }
  }
  handle /auto-events.js {
    rewrite * /auto-events.js
    reverse_proxy https://scripts.simpleanalyticscdn.com {
      header_up -X-Forwarded-For
    }
  }
}

/proxy.js https://simpleanalyticsexternal.com/proxy.js?hostname=example.com&path=/simple 200
/auto-events.js https://scripts.simpleanalyticscdn.com/auto-events.js 200
/simple/* https://queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com/:splat 200

{
  "rewrites": [
    {
      "source": "/proxy.js",
      "destination": "https://simpleanalyticsexternal.com/proxy.js?hostname=example.com&path=/simple"
    },
    {
      "source": "/auto-events.js",
      "destination": "https://scripts.simpleanalyticscdn.com/auto-events.js"
    },
    {
      "source": "/simple/:match*",
      "destination": "https://queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com/:match*"
    }
  ]
}

You can adapt this setup for other server configurations too. If you’re using a server setup we haven’t mentioned, let us know so we can add it to this documentation page.

Step 2: Update embed script

The embed script should be changed into this:

<script async src="https://example.com/proxy.js"></script>

<script async src="https://example.com/proxy.js"></script>
<noscript
  ><img
    src="https://example.com/simple/noscript.gif"
    alt=""
    referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade"
/></noscript>

This will send all traffic via your proxy on the endpoint /simple/....

Step 3: Automated events script (optional)

If you use the automated events script, make sure to update that script tag as well:

<script async src="https://example.com/auto-events.js"></script>

The full code will then become:

<script async src="https://example.com/proxy.js"></script>
<script async src="https://example.com/auto-events.js"></script>

Step 4: Validate your config

After these changes you should be able to visit the script at https://example.com/proxy.js.

It should return our embed script, starting with:

/* Simple Analytics - Privacy friendly analytics ... */

The simple.gif request (in your developer tools) should come back as a GIF with HTTP status code 202. If that’s the case, it works.

Let us know if we can help you with anything!