Discontinue plugin-google-analytics due to the UA sunset

[bohyunjung]

Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

• [X] I have read the Contributing Guidelines on issues.

Motivation

• Following the former deprecation, Universal Analytics (UA) has officially sunset as of the week of July 1, 2024.
• This renders the built-in plugin-google-analytics obsolete, eliminating the need to maintain it in future project releases.
• Several outbound links within the project are broken due to recent changes in Google Developers documentation.

Task Details

1. Remove packages/docusaurus-plugin-google-analytics
2. Remove the dependency from docusaurus-preset-classic
3. Update the documentation:
   • Remove the plugin documentation
   • Remove all references to the plugin
   • Reorder the Plugins sidebar
4. Update broken Google links in comments and documentation
   • Example: Replace https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/#install_the_global_site_tag with https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/gtagjs/install

Testing

• Ensure removal of the plugin doesn't break existing functionality
• Verify all updated links are correct and accessible

Self-service

• [ ] I'd be willing to do some initial work on this proposal myself.

[slorber]

Thanks

Yes we'll remove that plugin but it's technically a breaking change so it will be done for v4.

The plugin is already deprecated in our docs: https://docusaurus.io/docs/next/api/plugins/@docusaurus/plugin-google-analytics

[bohyunjung]

@slorber Thank you for the triage.

It appears that the codebase is not yet accepting PRs for v4. Therefore, I'll leave the plugin itself as-is for now.

In the meantime, I'd like to propose making a PR with the following small changes:

1. Fix broken outbound links to Google Developers Documentation
2. Update some expressions in the plugin documentation to reflect that Universal Analytics (UA) is completely obsolete

What are your thoughts on this approach?

[slorber]

Thanks but I think it's fine in the current state, this warning is big enough

And broken links such as this one do not seem like a big deal either considering it prints "Service Unavailable": https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/

It's not super useful to improve a page that we plan to remove soon

[bohyunjung]

Thanks for the quick feedback. I agree that these changes aren't necessary for the deprecated plugin at this time.

I'd like to note that the active plugin-google-gtag also has a broken link in its documentation:

• Current (broken): https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/
• Suggested fix: https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/gtagjs

If it's reasonable to fix this now, I'm happy to do so. Otherwise, I can keep this in mind for the v4 update.

[slorber]

Thanks, we'd want to fix this one indeed! (for all our docs versions). PR welcome.

It's weird that Google breaks links. They even discontinued their own link shortener recently. 😅