Recommended programs for tracking FEEDS and site VISITORS

You should have two things going on your blog already – feedburner integration, and analytics software.  I recommend using Feedburner because it does all the formatting and delivering of your feed off-site – freeing up bandwidth, and brain cells.  And google analytics I trust because, well, its THEM we’re trying to appease.  There may be more thorough trackers, but GA suits our purposes for now.   To set them up for the first time, get this Feedburner plugin, and this Google Analytics plugin.  Register for accounts on both feedburner.com and Google.com/Analytics and complete the setup as instructed under Settings >> Feedburner Set up and Google Analytics tabs respectively.

Check your stats

THEN – you need to check whats going on with the stats.  To be honest, running over to Feedburner or Google Analytics isn’t my first priority and I often forget to do it.  Plugins, again, come to our rescue.  If you are using the Google Analyticator plugin as mentioned above, you will have access to your stats immediately under the Dashboard.  If you are using a different analytics integration, you will need this plugin:

1. Google Analytics Dashboard and for your feeds,
2. Feed Subscriber Stats.

Note: if your blog is fairly new or if you are a long-time blogger, stats are equally important.  They tell us if we are meeting our GOALS.  If you are a baby blogger, perhaps 50 new subscribers seems like a mountain?  If you are a long-time blogger, perhaps some more optimization for search engines?  Or are your feed readers clicking on anything?  And what grabs their interest the most often?

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Don’t forget to come back every day this week for Hearts for Haiti give-aways!!

Most of us use, or once used, Google Analytics for thorough analysis of our blog numbers. By numbers, I’m referring to the numbers of site visits, or number of pages that were visited in a day or week; numbers can also refer to the number of comments you receive or number of clicks until someone leaves your website. Although Google Analytics has nearly everything you’d want for tracking your blog’s numbers, you do have to get those numbers at their site. To see your numbers through your own dashboard, similar to wordpress.com blogs, you can download a plugin wordpress.com stats.

How to install WordPress.com Stats plugin:
1. Go to your administration panel >> Plugins>> Add New.
2. Type “WordPress.Com Stats” in the search bar, and click “search plugins”.
3. The first result should be wordpress.com stats – click on the “install” link.
4. Click on “install now”.
5. Click on “activate”.

Next Step: Install the API Key
1. Go to www.wordpress.com and log in or register for a new account.
2. Click on “edit profile”
3. Copy the highlighted API key at the top of your profile.
4. Go to Plugins>>WordPress.com Stats and paste your API key.

All done! Once your program has had a couple hours to gather stats, they will show up under the Dashboard tab.

Hello all,

I wrote here about upgrading to wordpress 2.8.   And if you follow my directions, you will be able to log out and log back into your blog no problem.  However, if you leave the plugins active, you will likely not be allowed back into your blog once you log out.  You will need to erase/rename the offending plugin from your wp-includes/plugins directory.

***There is a conflict with the Google Analytics plugin that we provide to most blogs when we install them.

To resolve this conflict:

1. Please deactivate this plugin
2. Install “Google Analytics for WordPress” by Joost DeValk.  It is compatible with 2.8 and Joost has been a part of the WordPress community for as long as I have, and I trust him to keep this plugin up to date.
3. These plugins are completely FREE, so if you desire, you can donate a cup of coffee here.

If this is the plugin you currently have, then be sure to upgrade to the latest version before you upgrade your blog.  And then, if you haven’t already, you too may want to make a small donation.

Included in all our bundled packages are 10 plugins:

1. *Akismet anti-spam
2. contact form
3. All In One SEO
4. TinyMCE Advanced – installs extra options in the write panel
5. Google Analytics or WordPress.com Stats – which one?
6. *WP DB(database) Manager
7. Sociable bookmarking options.
8. Broken Link Checker
9. Feedburner
10. WP-Super-Cache to speed things up

* We strongly recommend these two.

Did you know that if we are already doing work on your blog, you can add any plugin to your work order for only $5?  If the only items you have on your work order are plugins, there is a minimum of 3 or $15.

Contact us today!