How CARL Integrates With Google Analytics
CARL doesn't have a dedicated Google Analytics settings field. It doesn't need one. Because every page CARL generates includes your site-wide header scripts automatically, adding GA4 to your entire site takes about 30 seconds: paste your tracking snippet into one include file, and every page you've published picks it up.
How It Works
Every CARL page template includes a file called header_scripts.txt from your site_includes folder. Anything in that file gets injected into the section of every published page on your site. This is the same mechanism used for custom fonts, custom CSS links, and any other site-wide head code. Google Analytics is just one more thing that belongs there.
Adding Your GA4 Tag
In your Google Analytics account, go to Admin, then Data Streams, select your web stream, and copy the Google tag snippet. In the CARL admin panel, go to Includes and open header_scripts.txt. Paste the snippet in and save. That's the entire process.
Because CARL pages are static PHP files, the tag is already embedded when a visitor loads each page. There's no CMS runtime assembling the head section on request. The tag is written into every generated file at publish time, so it fires reliably on every page load without relying on any JavaScript framework or plugin being active.
Regenerating After Adding the Tag
Updating header_scripts.txt doesn't automatically update pages that are already published on disk. To push the new tag to all existing pages, run a bulk regenerate after saving the include file. New pages published after that point will automatically include the tag, since they're generated fresh from the current include files.
Verifying It's Working
After regenerating, open any published page and view its source. Search for your GA measurement ID (it looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX) and confirm it appears in the head section. In Google Analytics, the Realtime report should show activity within a minute of you visiting the page. If you don't see the tag in the source, check that header_scripts.txt was saved correctly and that the bulk regenerate completed without errors.
