Add per-vhost hitcounts/paths

[mjsir911]

This PR is not made to have fully-comprehensive vhost support but designed to be as unobtrusively backwards compatible as possible (although not fully so unfortunately)

Things this PR intentionally doesn't do (these can be spun off into new issues):

• Implement vhost-tracking with the javascript or tracking pixel stuff
• do any sort of vhost filtering/searching/searching, and consequently doesn't create any new tables.

---

---

Additional things that need doing

• adding tests
• adding/updating documentation

Questions I have about interest in implementation before pursing it / can change behaviour in a less backward compatible way (these can all spin off into separate issues if out of scope of this PR):

• touch up domain link referral elision to maybe use vhost to elide referrers if they exist instead.
• migrate all historical paths to use domainlink if it exists
  • very backwards incompatible if using a goatcounter site for multiple vhosts AND setting a single domainlink., although I can't imagine anyone doing this? Makes all the links incorrect
• default set vhost to domainlink if vhost doesn't exist
  • Makes some assumptions about paths being uploaded without vhosts & assuming a site is for a single host if domainlink is set on that site. Which isn't a given.

[arp242]

The way GoatCounter has always done "vhosts" is by creating separate sites that share the same users. I'm not sure it's a good idea to add a second layer of "vhosts" on top of that to be honest.

Adding the ability to select which sites to display in the widget settings might be better? Simply allowing selecting the site to display for "Pages" should be fairly easy, and you can then add a second widget for the second site. Displaying multiple sites in one overview might be a bit harder. There's also some logical issues here – what to display for "totals", "Browsers", or "Referrers"?

[mjsir911]

The way GoatCounter has always done "vhosts" is by creating separate sites that share the same users. I'm not sure it's a good idea to add a second layer of "vhosts" on top of that to be honest.

Alright, sure. Would you be amenable to any of the following then: - updating the vhosts faq documentation to remove "maybe we'll implement this one day" - allow rejecting any hits uploaded via api that have a vhost, on a site that has a domainlink set where the vhost and domainlink don't match - alternatively, allow the goatcounter cli to programmatically upload to different sites depending on the vhost value. - work on tooling to spin off multiple goatcounter imports filtering and uploading to and creating different sites automatically. There are *currently* some issues with assuming all uploaded hits are underneath a single vhost. - Links generated on the hitcounts in the UI go to nonexistent places. - Colliding paths get combined into one hitcount (incorrectly). If goatcounter is assuming that 1 site per vhost, is there anything that can be done to enforce/flag these assumptions? It will be a bit inconvenient for me to set up arbitrary sites and arbitrary scrapers for whatever domains pop up on my reverse proxy, but this is workable since my understanding is the API provides arbitrary site creation & the log importer does currently allow vhost filtering.

Adding the ability to select which sites to display in the widget settings might be better? Simply allowing selecting the site to display for "Pages" should be fairly easy, and you can then add a second widget for the second site. Displaying multiple sites in one overview might be a bit harder. There's also some logical issues here – what to display for "totals", "Browsers", or "Referrers"?

I'm not at my computer right now but i can pursue this/see what you're talking about in a bit.

[arp242]

Right; so what you want isn't so much viewing multiple sites/domains on a single dashboard, but rather importing arbitrary domains from logfiles without having to set up any site for it first?

[mjsir911]

Aug 11, 2025 11:47:38 AM Martin Tournoij ***@***.***>:

[Image]*arp242* left a comment (arp242/goatcounter#833)[#833 (comment)] Right; so what you want isn't so much viewing multiple sites/domains on a single dashboard, but rather importing arbitrary domains from logfiles without having to set up any sites for it? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub[#833 (comment)], or unsubscribe[https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEDDZQSE7AIVMHWYBX7GMED3NDQLVAVCNFSM6AAAAACDQFYB32VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTCNZWGM2TEMBUHE]. You are receiving this because you authored the thread. [Tracking image][https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AEDDZQWOOFDOHI7TUZERRNL3NDQLVA5CNFSM6AAAAACDQFYB32WGG33NNVSW45C7OR4XAZNMJFZXG5LFINXW23LFNZ2KUY3PNVWWK3TUL5UWJTV5KNETC.gif]

Correct, yeah. This PR does as much and handles that import relatively sanely.

[mjsir911]

@arp242 how do the netlify PR-domains work? can I preview this version of goatcounter on them?