Ignore your own visits

Why you’d want this

If you often open your own site to check a change, write a post or test a feature, those visits show up in your stats like anyone else’s. You can tell Crustat to skip your browser.

The easy way: one switch

1. Open your site in Crustat and go to Site settings → Install.
2. At the bottom, turn on Ignore my visits on this browser.
3. Your site opens in a new tab. That’s it: this browser is now left out on that site.

To show your visits again, turn the switch off. Your site opens once more and the setting is removed.

Do this in the browser you use to visit your site. The switch in Crustat only remembers what you last picked. The real setting is saved in your browser, on your site.

The same thing by hand

Open your site with #crustat-ignore at the end of the address:

https://example.com/#crustat-ignore

The ending has to be exactly that, with nothing after it. When the tracker sees it, it:

1. saves a flag called crustat_ignore in that browser’s localStorage (a small storage space each website gets in your browser),
2. prints “Crustat: ignoring visits from this browser” in the browser console,
3. removes #crustat-ignore from the address.

From then on, the tracker checks for the flag before doing anything. If it’s there, it sends nothing at all: no page views, no clicks, no events. It doesn’t even load your event rules.

To undo it, open:

https://example.com/#crustat-ignore-off

That removes the flag, and the visit you just made shows up again.

Where the setting applies

localStorage belongs to one browser and one exact web address. So the flag is:

• Per browser. Setting it in Chrome doesn’t set it in Firefox, or on your phone. Do it in each browser you use.
• Per profile. A private window or another browser profile has its own storage. Clearing your browser’s site data removes the flag too.
• Per address. example.com, www.example.com and shop.example.com each keep their own storage.

The switch opens only your site’s main domain. If your site also runs on other addresses (a shop on its own domain, an app on a subdomain, or both www and non-www without a redirect), open each one with #crustat-ignore at the end. If your main domain redirects to www, the switch usually still works, because the ending survives the redirect.

On WordPress

The Crustat plugin already leaves out people who can edit the site while they’re signed in, so you may not need this at all. See Install Crustat on WordPress.

Is this allowed without a cookie banner?

Yes. The flag is saved only when you, the site owner, open that special link in your own browser and ask for it. Your visitors never get anything stored on their devices. The tracker only checks whether the flag is there, and for them it never is. See Do I need a cookie banner?