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+---
+title: "De-Google my blog - How to blog in 2020 without Google"
+date: 2020-05-20T10:41:56-03:00
+lastmod: 2020-05-25T10:41:56-03:00
+tags : [ "degoogle", "devops", "meta", "hugo", ]
+---
+
+Hi everyone!
+
+Right now I have Google almost completely out of my life, but some of the top commentaries of my 
+posts in [/r/degoogle](https://reddit.com/r/degoogle) and [/r/selfhosted](https://reddit.com/r/selfhosted) were "Your blog still uses google for resources lol", 
+so I needed to change that.
+
+In my old blog, the features that used Google where:
+  1) Disquss comments
+  2) The Ghost theme
+
+**Before we begin, I want to let you know that all these fixes have been applied, so you are currently 
+experiencing the final result.**
+
+# Fixing comments
+
+I was using disquss to handle comments, since it is what everyone recommends. I checked the network 
+resources on my site and found something horrible: A bunch of random calls to a bunch of external 
+addresses, not just Google. Since I care about my reader's privacy, disquss had to go. Someone in 
+/r/degoogle suggested "Commento", and it looked like it was exactly what I needed: A free and opensource, 
+self-hosted alternative to disquss, and it also had an official docker release!
+
+According to their [documentation](https://docs.commento.io/installation/self-hosting/on-your-server/docker.html):
+```yaml
+version: '3'
+
+services:
+  server:
+    image: registry.gitlab.com/commento/commento
+    restart: always
+    ports:
+      - 5000:8080
+    environment:
+      COMMENTO_ORIGIN: https://commento.rogs.me
+      COMMENTO_PORT: 8080
+      COMMENTO_POSTGRES: postgres://postgres:mysupersecurepassword@db:5432/commento?sslmode=disable
+      COMMENTO_SMTP_HOST: my-mail-host.com
+      COMMENTO_SMTP_PORT: 587
+      COMMENTO_SMTP_USERNAME: mysmtpusername@mail.com
+      COMMENTO_SMTP_PASSWORD: mysmtppassword
+      COMMENTO_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS: mysmtpfromaddress@mail.com
+    depends_on:
+      - db
+  db:
+    image: postgres
+    restart: always
+    environment:
+      POSTGRES_DB: commento
+      POSTGRES_USER: postgres
+      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: mysupersecurepassword
+    volumes:
+      - postgres_data_volume:/var/lib/postgresql/data
+
+volumes:
+  postgres_data_volume:
+```
+
+I created an NGINX reverse proxy for port 5000 and that was it! Commento was up and running without much 
+issue.
+
+![2020-05-20-105918](/2020-05-20-105918.png)
+
+Then, I configured my blog and added the simple universal snippet on my blog posts template pages:
+
+```html
+<script defer src="https://commento.rogs.me/js/commento.js"></script>
+<div id="commento"></div>
+```
+
+# Is that it?
+
+Yes, as easy as that. Comments were up and running in less than 20 mins, with no random external resources. 
+*Sweet!*
+
+![2020-05-20-110914](/2020-05-20-110914.png)
+
+I could even import my old disquss comments in Commento! I was a bit sad to lose them, but they were 
+just fine! 
+
+![2020-05-21-121039](/2020-05-21-121039.png)
+
+So now that my comments were ready, I could move forward to fixing Ghost
+
+# The Ghost theme
+
+This was quite simple. I forked the git repo for my blog theme and began removing everything regarding 
+Google fonts. You can check the final results here: https://git.rogs.me/me/blog.rogs.me-ghost-theme
+
+## But that's not entirely it!
+
+My ghost blog was big and bloated, and I wasn't really enjoying it anymore, so I wanted to move it to something more 
+static, fast, and reliable, so I moved everything to Hugo!
+
+## What is [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/)?
+
+According to their website:
+> Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. With its amazing speed and flexibility, Hugo makes building websites fun again.
+
+So it is a static site generator, that uses .md files for content.
+
+## Why did I chose Hugo? 
+
+- Hugo needs no dependencies. I just had to do `sudo pacman -S hugo` and no further dependencies were 
+needed
+- Hugo doesn't need a database since it is *static*. That means that my blog could load *A LOT* faster 
+(and it does!)
+- Hugo uses a lot less resources than Ghost. For Ghost I needed a docker running with a database, with Hugo
+I just serve the files directly with NGINX, just like a regular plain HTML website.
+
+## And that is what you are seeing right now!
+
+This blog is 100% running with Hugo. Migration was super easy, since Ghost also uses Markdown files. I just needed to match the URLs so old posts wouldn't break and comments worked like they did before. I chose a simple template, migrated, deployed to my server and that was it! 
+
+You can check the code for my blog here: https://git.rogs.me/me/blog.rogs.me
+
+My theme: https://themes.gohugo.io/hugo-theme-m10c/
+
+I was pretty satisfied with the migration and how things were coming along.
+
+# One extra thing: [Matomo Analytics](https://matomo.org/)
+
+For Analytics, of course I wasn't going to use Google Analytics, so Matomo was an easy choice. Here is my 
+configuration:
+
+```yaml
+version: "3"
+
+services:
+  app:
+    image: matomo:latest
+    restart: always
+    links:
+      - db
+    volumes:
+      - "./config:/var/www/html/config:rw"
+      - "./logs:/var/www/html/logs"
+    ports:
+      - "9000:80"
+
+  db:
+    image: mariadb:latest
+    restart: always
+    volumes:
+      - "./mysql/runtime2:/var/lib/mysql"
+    environment:
+      - "MYSQL_DATABASE=matomo"
+      - "MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=mysupersecurepassword"
+      - "MYSQL_USER=matomo"
+      - "MYSQL_PASSWORD=anothersupersecurepassword"
+```
+Again, another reverse proxy for port `9000` and Matomo was up and running!
+
+![2020-05-20-114330](/2020-05-20-114330.png)
+![2020-05-21-121645](/2020-05-21-121645.png)
+*My blog stats in Matomo*
+
+Matomo has everything I need, while respecting the users' privacy. If you haven't used it before, you should definitely check it out! I have used Google Analytics before, but Matomo seems more powerful to me.
+
+# Conclusion
+
+It isn't easy to run a website outside of Google, but with a little dedication it is possible. With tools 
+like Matomo and Commento you can easily respect your user's privacy and get away from Google's "big 
+brotherness".
+
+If you have any further suggestions, I'm always looking for more things to self-host and separate
+from big corporations.
+
+Until next time!
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