Machete vs VisitStats

Machete is a simple suite of tools that solves common WordPress annoyances using as few resources as possible. Machete doesn’t cover every single use case, but there is a huge amount of sites that would require less plugins if they used Machete. All Machete tools have two things in common: they solve problems faced by many web developers and they do it using as few server resources as possible. So far, Machete includes the following tools: WordPress Optimization WordPress places a lot of code inside the tag just to keep backward compatibility or to enable optional features. You can disable most of it and save some time from each page request while making your installation safer. Cookies & GDPR Warning We know you hate cookie warning bars. Well, this is the least hateable cookie bar you’ll find. It is really light, doesn’t affect your PageSpeed score and plays well with static cache plugins. Analytics and custom code You don’t need a zillion plugins to perform easy tasks like inserting a verification meta tag (Google Search Console, Bing, Pinterest), a json-ld snippet or a custom stylesheet (Google Fonts, Print Styles, accessibility tweaks…). The Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager tracking codes are PageSpeed optimized, GPDR friendly. Maintenance mode The maintenance mode that ships with WordPress is just a basic lock-down that is activated whenever you do a major update. With machete Maintenance Mode you can hide your unfinished page from visitors and search engines, give your clients a secure temporary access and lock your site without affecting your SEO. Post & Page cloner Adds a “duplicate” link to post, page and most post types lists. Also adds “copy to new draft” function to the post editor. Social Sharing Buttons Social sharing done the Machete way. The icons are made as a custom webfont embedded in a minified CSS file that only weighs 5.8KB. The sharing actions use each platform’s native share URL. WooCommerce Utils WooCommerce was designed to work for every possible use case, but that often leads to unexpected behavior. These simple fixes can improve the WooCommerce user experience by making it behave as clients expect.

VisitStats is a lightweight, privacy-first analytics plugin for WordPress. All your data stays in your own WordPress database — we never see it, no third party sees it. Why VisitStats? No cookies, no consent banner needed. Tracking is GDPR-friendly by default. Self-hosted. All data lives in your WordPress database. No external service, no Automattic, no Google. Lightweight. Frontend tracker is under 2KB. Loads asynchronously. Won’t slow your site. Zero setup. Install, activate, done. No theme edits, no tag manager, no JS snippets. Built for WordPress. Reports appear inside your WordPress dashboard — no separate app to log into. Recommended for sites with up to ~10,000 daily pageviews (around 95% of WordPress sites). For very high-traffic sites, consider dedicated analytics services. What you get (all free, all the time): Real-time visitor count — see who’s on your site right now Pageviews, unique visitors, sessions Top pages Top traffic sources (direct, search, social, AI, referral) Top referrers — actual URLs sending you traffic Device breakdown (desktop, mobile, tablet) Browser & operating system detection Configurable data retention from 1 day up to 1 year Date range views: today, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 1 year Engagement signals (scroll depth, time on page) Cookieless visitor identification using daily-rotating salt + SHA-256 hashing Bot filtering with built-in bot signature detection Optional administrator / logged-in user exclusion Honors Do Not Track browser signal Automatic data pruning to keep your database lean Rate-limited tracking endpoint protects against abuse IP anonymization before hashing — actual IPs never stored Privacy by design VisitStats never: Sets cookies Stores IP addresses Sends data to third parties Fingerprints visitors Tracks across days Visitor identification uses a daily-rotating salt hashed with the (anonymized) IP and User Agent to count unique visits within a 24-hour window. The salt regenerates every 24 hours, making cross-day tracking impossible. This is the same approach used by Plausible Analytics and Fathom Analytics. For developers Clean REST API at /wp-json/visitstats/v1/ Filter hooks for customizing behavior (rate limiting, bot detection, etc.) PSR-style class organization No external dependencies — pure WordPress core