WordPress.com Stats

If you’re already using Google Analytics for WordPress (see our post on Google Analytics for WordPress) then you already have a ton of information about your blog’s traffic. So much information, in fact, that it may be hard to get a bird’s eye view. That’s where WordPress Stats comes in. Simply give it your WordPress.com API Key (see our post on Akismet for detail on this) and in return you’ll get a dashboard item telling you the quick and dirty version of what’s happening on your site, with a wealth of additional information just clicks away. And don’t worry about server load: WordPress Stats is a hosted analytics solution just like Google Analytics. Great stuff.

Check out the WordPress Stats plugin home page for more information or to download it yourself.

Other Great Plugins to Explore

There are lots of great plugins that we’ll be talking about in the coming weeks (FeedBurner Widget, Flickr Feed Gallery and NextGEN Gallery for example). Which ones would you recommend? Post below in the comments or drop us an email and let us know which ones you find most useful. =)

Google Analytics for WordPress

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool for web analytics and conversion tracking. But to work, a snippet of JavaScript code (provided by Google in your Analytics account) has to be added to each page you want tracked. For non-coders this means modifying template’s footer PHP code, which can be a little daunting. The simpler, better way is to let WordPress do the heavy lifting for you, which is where this plugin comes in. Simply feed it your Analytics account code and you’re off to the races. For more advanced users, the plugin’s settings screen also features the ability to track outbound clicks, and can even be configured to place the JavaScript in the header, if needed. Great stuff, and very easy to use.

Check out the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin home page for more information or to download it yourself. As usual, don’t forget to donate to the author!

Next time we’ll cover Google XML Sitemaps, a great tool to help search engines (not just Google) find your blog.

The one gotcha is that the ga.js code can’t be at the bottom of the page, which is non-typical, and could increase page rendering times. The reason Google’s ga.js code goes at the very bottom is to prevent the latency of connecting to Google from adding to the page’s render time. Since the code is now at the top of the page, there’s no way to avoid the (admittedly only potential) latency problem.

But hey, you can track your document downloads! =)

Update: Also works for offsite links.