Hey Guys,
Does anyone know of a good statistics plugin that I could download so that I can check the visitor statistics on my site?
Thanks 
Maria
Statistics plugin
(8 posts) (3 voices)
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Posted 1 year ago #
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WordPress has a statistics plugin called WordPress Stats http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/
I don't know of any other plugin. I use Google Analytics in addition to this plugin.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I use that same plugin and love it. Like Rebecca I also use Google Analytics, but to be honest I think you'll get everything you need from the plugin.
To activate it, you need an API key from wordpress.com (not .org), which you can get just by signing up for a free username there - you don't need a blog hosted at wordpress.com (unless you already have one there), just a username will get you an API key. To find it, log in and go to your Account, copy the API key & paste it into the plugin's admin page. That's it - it will start collecting stats for you, and give you a mini-display on your Dashboard. Click on "view all" to expand the mini view and see what's going on at your site.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Thanks guys, that's exactly what I was looking for.
Maria
Posted 1 year ago # -
The above statistics plugin has been gathering data for a few days now, but I have a question about the results.
I gave my domainname to a friend so that she could check out my site and give me some feedback. Not many other people have my address at this moment.
The day I gave her my address, she went to my site and checked it out.The result in the statistics for that day are 11 visitors. Now I know for a fact that she was the only one that visited that day and in the more detailed results I could see which pages she had clicked on. She had clicked on 11 pages in total.
For some reason the plugin counted her visits to each page as individual visitors, resluting in 11 visitors, while in reality I had only had one visitor.I checked out the plugin to see if I maybe had ticked a wrong box when I set it up, in the hope I could change it.
But is doesn't seem possible for me to let it count just the visitors separately and not let the pages they visit count in the visitor statistics.Is this normal 'behaviour' for this plugin, or did I do something wrong?
Maria
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hi Maria
No, that does not seem normal....it is definitely odd.....however, keep in mind that bots (such as the googlebot crawler and other search engines) are considered visitors, and if you're pinging the search engines when you publish posts (built in to WP, when you check Settings >Writing and in the bottom section labeled Update Services if there are sites listed there, even one site, then you're pinging) then the bots are coming by to read your site as well, and there are lots of bots....or it could have been one bot that read all your pages.
Another possibility is that it may be counting your own visits, not of the back end, but if you're viewing (or previewing) pages/posts it may be counting you.
For these reasons if you're really looking to get specific numbers, you may want to use the WP stats as a general guideline of trends and use Google for more specific numbers, as you can structure Google Analytics to *not* count your own visits.
All that being said, while I do think it's important to be aware of your site's traffic statistics, I always advise people to pay more attention to trends than numbers - numbers will drive you crazy, trends will give you goals to strive for.
One last thought - the behavior of people is such that *most* people will just read one page on your site (very typical for a blog, folks come by to read your latest post, then leave).....although a few may stay and read other pages, many will just read one, so don't worry if the number of visitors and number of pages are close, if not identical - it doesn't indicate a problem, it just tells you that most of your visitors are behaving normally.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hey Trisha,
I am glad you said that most people will just read one page of my site and therefore not 'mess up' the statistics (as they now seem to be displayed) too much.
I will just wait and see what will happen in the next couple of months, and if I feel that they are still 'off', I will let you know.
I am sure that it is not counting my own visits, because it clearly says it doesn't count visitors who are logged in, and I am always logged in when I visit my site.I assume that by trends you mean which pages/posts people visit the most, so to make sure those are always up to date.
Maria
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hi Maria
Yes, do keep me posted on this issue..... and yes, by trends I do mean which of your pages get the most traffic, as it's a valuable clue as to what brings people to your site, and what you should be writing more of! Also, by trends I mean to make sure that in general you're seeing growth - there will always be ups and downs, but over time you want to see a general upward trend in number of visitors and number of subscribers, both to your email list and your RSS Feed....as long as the trend is generally upward, then you're doing the right things. Don't worry about the days that things seem to be downward, that just happens, and it's not worth losing sleep over, because it nearly always reverses itself and goes upward again soon.
I'm looking forward to your site launch!
Posted 1 year ago #
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