Installing Offen on Elementary OS Latest

Offen is an open-source, self-hosted tool for web analytics. It allows you to gather insights about your website visitors whilst respecting their privacy. This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Offen on Elementary OS Latest.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

• A server running Elementary OS Latest
• A terminal to execute commands
• sudo privileges

Step 1: Install Dependencies

Offen requires the following software to be installed on your system:

• Node.js (v10.13.0 or later)
• npm package manager (v5.5.0 or later)
• PostgreSQL database

To install Node.js and the npm package manager, open your terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

To install PostgreSQL, run the following command:

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

Step 2: Create a PostgreSQL User and Database

Create a new PostgreSQL database and user by running the following commands:

sudo -u postgres psql

This will open the PostgreSQL command prompt. Run the following commands:

CREATE DATABASE offen;
CREATE USER offen_user WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'yourpasswordhere';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE offen TO offen_user;
\q

Replace yourpasswordhere with a strong password of your choice.

Step 3: Download and Install Offen

Open your terminal and navigate to the directory where you want to install Offen. Then run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/offen/offen.git && cd offen && npm install

This will download and install Offen on your system.

Step 4: Configure Offen

Copy the .env.dist file to .env by running the following command:

cp .env.dist .env

Open the .env file using your preferred text editor and update the following environment variables:

• OFFEN_SITENAME: Your website name
• OFFEN_SECRET: A strong secret key
• DATABASE_URL: postgresql://offen_user:yourpasswordhere@localhost:5432/offen

Save and close the file.

Step 5: Start Offen

To start Offen, run the following command from the root directory of your Offen installation:

npm start

This will start the Offen server on port 3000.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you have successfully installed and configured Offen on your Elementary OS Latest system. You can now add the Offen snippet to your website to start gathering visitor analytics whilst respecting their privacy.

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