[jasonjmcghee]

I'll interpret this as "what design choices that you made for your blog deprived you of something you could have had?"

Maybe others can find answering it in this light interesting too.

I have no analytics tracking and host my site on GitHub Pages, so I have no idea how many people have seen my work or read my stuff hosted there (I've tried out substack too which does give page views and referrers).

So my personal blog (tech choices) have deprived me of understanding what people tend to like, finish, read, re-visit, how they found it etc or (if I had more intense tracking) what type of people tend to visit, where they live and where they work etc.

I also have no comments sections, so I've deprived myself of the potential for engagement or constructive feedback etc

I very likely could find ways to improve content and increase personal motivation using those types of tools, but it's a personal blog and I just rather let everyone be anonymous.

[coinfused]

I first used basic google analytics but found it too invasive/heavy so I switched over to https://www.goatcounter.com/.

For comments, most solutions were also too heavy, paid or had ads, but I finally found https://giscus.app/.

So while I did add these 2 features, I'm happy with those variants that I managed to find.

[mbivert]

> I also have no comments sections

A crude and dirt cheap way of ""implementing"" comments is to leave your email address, sufficiently captcha'd, and append the comments manually to the pages. As a bonus, you're sure all comments are moderated, relevant, there's no need to share data with anyone (well, but your email provider probably), no need for JS, no need for a local service, etc.

[manuelmoreale]

In my experience you don’t even have to have it sufficiently captcha’d. My email has been on my blog for 7 years and spam is definitely not an issue. But maybe I’m just lucky

[raytopia]

I host on neocities so somewhat similar story here. I do know how many people are showing up but I have no clue what pages people are reading or if they are at all and I have no clue what anyone even thinks. So despite Neocities telling me how many people are visiting I effectively know nothing.