StatPress Reloaded Plugin … It rocks.
January 17, 2009
One of the things that my buddy Dave does is to regularly bring out cool new plugins that he finds along the way so that others can benefit. I think I may have found one, Dave (et al) and would be interested in everyone’s thoughts.
I rarely get excited about analytics. (Can I get an “Amen”!) They are a chore. A necessary evil to understand what is going on with a site and to track search marketing progress. I don’t dislike analytics, I find them fascinating…in a masochistic sort of way…
But I am a coach.
I KNOW that even when you set up a Google Analytics program FOR a customer, they will seldom go in there, It is out of their way to login to GA and to track stuff. So what’s a poor boy to do? (First off, I need to tip my hat to Scott Hack for the nice find…and thanks for the heads up)
StatPress Reloaded Plugin for WordPress
This little guy does two things that are missing elements with Google analytics. First and foremost, the stats are right there in the WP back end…so if a customer is writing a post, they can (with ONE click, see the stats.) Love that. It removes excuses for people NOT checking who’s visiting them by making it drop dead simple.
This is crucial in coaching. Make the right stuff easy and the wrong stuff (read: not checking) hard. Simply put, that alone is a winner for me. This simplicity helps as well with other group blogs in showing the stats to other members of the group. (read: “Look it up yourself. It’s right THERE!” (grin). 10 minutes of my life returned to me!
OK, now to the other reason that I like it. It doesn’t share the information with ANYONE but me. It stores it in a database that I can easily export to a spreadsheet if there is a need, but as much as I like Google, I am just not a big fan of putting my analytics data in the public domain. Even with people I would normally trust.
I did try it out on several versions of WordPress (I am still using 2.6.x on some of my various blogs-for a number of reasons), it worked well on all of them. I did not test StatPress at WordPress 2.5 or below. Let’s face it, If you are there, you need to upgrade. Seriously.
Since it appears that statpress (according to the wordpress link above) is now being supported again, what I’d like to do is hear your opinions of it, what you think should be added (different analytics to measure, etc.
Thoughts?
Eric
Eric,
I saw your tweet about this post. Followed the tinyurl
then installed the StatPress plugin and activated.
It is ok, but to me much like GA, hard to find what I want easily and quickly. For one reason. Unless I close all the dropdowns in my admin menu I have to scroll to get to each new option in StatPress. I also don’t find the information organized in an intuitive way for how I think.
About 10 days ago I installed the Woopra for WordPress and it too is available from the Top of the Admin panel. Once open they are more graphic and I can quickly click from tab to tab. The information is organized in a way I grasp quickly. I’ll keep both installed for the time being. I don’t understand the StatPress Update button or the need to push it.
It might involve setting up a Woopra Account, I’m not sure on that one. I already had one and id codes for all my blogs so I plugged those in. It might not be necessary. I do know I really like those stats.
Eric,
I just noticed something else. Links are all in blue. Comments are all in blue. I placed a link in my comment to the Woopra Plugin but unless you mouse over it you will never know there is a link there. CSS ?
Hey Dave;
First @ the link…yes it is CSS, but not intentional!
When I modded the theme, I changed the CSS to blue in order to match up with the blue in the Headlines…but since I don’t do many (if any) links in comments, I did not even see that it had that effect…just changed everything red (original) to blue and that got caught in the deal.Changing it back! Thanks for the catch.
I have not tried Woopra! (saw your mention on the blog lab, but did not find it! Thx for the link!) Kind of like an upcoming blog post comparing FLIP HD video camera to my INIGNIA HD video…I think it would be really fun to do a plugin throwdown and have a poll plugin and have people vote. These stats packages would be some ideal candidates for that!
I am off to put Woopra on this thing and try it out!
Ok, CSS corrected!
I am fine with red comment text and it makes the links in the comment text stand out. Thanks for the catch, Dave… Hooking up the Woopra next.
I can answer the question about the “update” — the update process will update known spiders. It tries to give you a solid idea of WHERE your traffic is coming from, so it tries to stay up to date on new spiders indexing the web.