Introduction & Concepts

TapTally is a self-hosted analytics engine built around one simple idea — you tap, we tally. Every click, page view, event, or anything else you can count is stored as a counter, and counters are organized into namespaces. This guide walks through the web application from a user's point of view: signing in, creating namespaces and counters, labelling and filtering them, reading the dashboards, and issuing API keys.

If you are looking to install or operate TapTally on a cluster instead, head to the Deployment section.

Core concepts

TapTally has a small vocabulary. Learn these five terms and the rest of the app follows naturally.

Term	What it is
Namespace	A named collection that groups related counters — think of it as a folder or scope (e.g. blog, analytics, user-metrics). Every counter lives inside exactly one namespace.
Counter	A single named tally that holds a numeric value. A counter is addressed as namespace/key and its value is measured in taps by default.
Key	The counter's identifier within its namespace (e.g. page-views, button-clicks). It should describe what you're counting.
Value	The counter's current count. New counters start at 0 and go up as taps arrive.
Labels	Free-text tags you attach to namespaces and counters to organize and filter them (e.g. production, backend, critical).

A sixth concept, trackers, appears once you start collecting web traffic — TapTally automatically classifies certain counters into categories like Page Visits or Response Codes. See Labels & Trackers.

Finding your way around

The app has two persistent navigation areas.

Left sidebar

The main menu down the left edge of the screen:

Item	Goes to
Overview	The home dashboard — your top namespaces at a glance.
List Namespaces	Browse, search, and create namespaces.
List Counters	Browse, search, sort, and filter every counter.
Analytics	Web/HTTP traffic dashboards built from ingress access logs.
Reports	Coming soon — currently disabled.
Settings	Application configuration (pinned to the bottom of the sidebar).

Top header

A floating bar across the top contains:

• The TapTally logo on the left — click it to jump back to the Overview.
• A light / dark mode toggle (sun / moon icon).
• Your display name and avatar. Clicking the avatar opens a menu with Settings and Logout.

Where to next

• Signing In — create an account and log in.
• Namespaces — organize your counters into collections.
• Counters — create and track individual tallies.
• Dashboards & Analytics — read your data.