Not every website needs the same analytics data.
Sometimes it’s enough to know how often a page was viewed, where visitors came from and which pages get the most traffic. For other kinds of analytics, Lienks needs to be able to tell whether multiple pageviews probably belong to the same visitor.
That’s why you can decide how Lienks should measure traffic for each website.
To keep you from having to deal with every technical setting individually, Lienks comes with three predefined modes: Minimal, Cookieless and Cookie.
Minimal
Minimal is the most restrictive setting.
Lienks only collects the data needed for basic website statistics and doesn’t try to associate multiple pageviews with a recognizable visitor.
You can still see things like how many pageviews your website had, which pages were visited, where traffic came from or which countries your visitors were from.
What you give up are analytics that require Lienks to distinguish one visitor from another.
No cookies are set and no persistent visitor ID is created.
Cookieless
Cookieless is the default setting in Lienks.
For me, it’s the most sensible middle ground: Lienks can associate different pageviews within a single day with the same visitor ID without storing an ID or cookie in the visitor’s browser.
To do this, Lienks briefly processes the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent. Together with the site ID and a secret key that rotates every day, these are used to generate a visitor ID:
IP + User Agent + Site ID + Daily Key → Visitor ID
Only the resulting visitor ID is stored. The IP address and full user agent are processed for this purpose, but aren’t stored in your analytics data.
Because the secret key changes every day, the same visitor will get a different ID the next day.
A visitor ID from today therefore can’t simply be connected to a visitor ID from tomorrow.
This lets Lienks do things like count distinct visitors within a day or determine which pageviews probably belong together.
The recognition is still an approximation. For example, two similar devices sharing the same public IP address could potentially be counted as the same visitor. On the other hand, if a visitor’s IP address changes, they might be counted a second time.
At the same time, this doesn’t create a persistent identifier that can be used to recognize someone across days, weeks or months.
And Lienks doesn’t need to store anything in the visitor’s browser to do it.
The visitor ID is deliberately a compromise: enough recognition for many useful analytics features, without creating a long-term visitor history.
Cookie
If you want Lienks to distinguish visitors more accurately, it can also use a short-lived cookie.
In this mode, Lienks generates a random visitor ID and stores it in the browser. The same ID is then reused for additional pageviews during that day.
This lets Lienks distinguish visitors more accurately than in Cookieless mode. Recognition no longer depends on things like whether a visitor’s IP address changes during the day.
The Cookie mode is deliberately limited to a single day as well. The stored ID expires at the end of the day. Lienks doesn’t use it to build a visitor history across multiple days, weeks or months.
So the difference between Cookieless and Cookie isn’t how long a visitor can be recognized, but how.
Cookieless works without storing anything in the browser. Cookie uses a short-lived ID in the browser and can therefore distinguish visitors more accurately.
Because this involves storing information in the browser, different requirements around cookies and consent may apply.
Do I need a cookie banner for Lienks?
This is exactly the kind of question the three modes are meant to make easier to answer.
When you select a mode, Lienks shows you how it works technically and what the setting means for cookies, consent and your privacy policy.
Importantly, this is about Lienks itself.
Even if Lienks doesn’t set cookies with your chosen configuration, other parts of your website might still require consent or a consent banner. This could include embedded videos, advertising services or other third-party scripts.
So using Lienks in a cookieless configuration doesn’t automatically mean your entire website doesn’t need a consent banner.
What do I need to put in my privacy policy?
I want to make this as simple as possible too.
Lienks already knows which settings you’ve selected for your website. From those settings, it also knows which data is processed and how analytics works on your site.
That’s why Lienks will provide a ready-to-use privacy policy section based on your configuration.
If you’re using Cookieless with a visitor ID that changes every day, for example, you’ll get a different text than you would with a configuration that uses a short-lived cookie.
You can then copy the relevant section into your own privacy policy instead of having to explain the Lienks configuration and its technical details yourself.
The three modes are just presets
Minimal, Cookieless and Cookie aren’t technical limitations of Lienks.
They’re three presets I chose so that you don’t have to understand ten different privacy and tracking settings just to add analytics to a normal website.
If you want more control over how Lienks works on your website, you’ll also be able to configure the individual settings yourself.
For example, you could decide which information is processed, whether a visitor ID is generated or whether an identifier may be stored in the browser.
With that extra control comes some extra responsibility.
With a custom configuration, Lienks can’t simply assume that you’re using one of the three known presets. You’ll need to check what your chosen settings mean for consent and your privacy policy.
Lienks should still explain as much as possible and provide a suitable privacy policy section for your chosen configuration.
The three default modes ultimately exist for one simple reason:
You should be able to use Lienks without having to become an analytics and privacy expert first.