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Wordpress Stats For Self-Hosted Wordpress Blog

written by John Chow on May 21st, 2007

Because I have never hosted my blog on the free Wordpress blog hosting service I never knew that Wordpress comes with cool stats system. However, it looks like the Wordpress team has decided to offer their Wordpress stats service to any self-hosted Wordpress blogs. All you need to do is download and install this plugin.

There are hundreds of plugins and services which can provide statistics about your visitors. However I found that even though something like Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface.

To use the Stats plugin, you’ll need a Wordpress account and a Wordpress API key. You can either use the key from Akismet or get a new key from Wordpress.

wordpress-stats.jpg

Once installed and running the plugin will begin collecting information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave (I really like that one). You access your stats right from the Wordpress Dashboard, where a blog stats tab has been added.

Dave said on May 21st, 2007 at 5:07 pm

You use Google Analytics as well….do you think that you will be using both? Or one or the other mostly?

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John Chow said on May 21st, 2007 at 5:34 pm

I use this and Analytics and Sitemeter.

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Eric said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:42 pm

John,
Maybe you could write a post with the pro’s and con’s of each, or how they complement each other, something like that.

The Million Dollar Homepage?

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website copywriter said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:59 am

That’s not a bad idea. It would be pretty helpful, I think.

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:15 am

another cool plugin

thanks john

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Nomar said on May 30th, 2007 at 3:01 am

hmm… maybe I should sign up for sitemeter to.. analytics is sometimes weird

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Gdog said on May 21st, 2007 at 5:12 pm

This is off topic, but did anyone notice that http://www.stephenfung.net has been hacked?! :shock:

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Eric said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Wahlau.NET said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:57 pm
John Chow said on May 21st, 2007 at 8:06 pm

I called him. He went away on a trip and his laptop is missing some files to completely fix it. But he should have the blog back up tonight.

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InvestorBlogger said on May 22nd, 2007 at 7:51 am

I wouldn’t suggest visiting that blog! It tried to load something in my FF! I don’t know what it was…. Wait till it’s cleaned up!

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Jiang said on May 21st, 2007 at 5:25 pm

This plugins look like useful.

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Steve's Tech Blog said on May 21st, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Thanks!

Just installed it. Now, I have to wait 20 minutes before it start working. But I will check later because 24 is on(I like the pause on my PVR)

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SEO Tips & Tutorials said on May 21st, 2007 at 5:57 pm

Hahaa. It’s useful if you are lazy like me =P. But Analytics is better with the “Keyword” refering from the search engines :wink: .

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SEO Tips & Tutorials said on May 21st, 2007 at 6:12 pm

I stand corrected: It’s NOT better than Analytics, in fact, you still have to login to WordPress.com (which is stupid?). I thought we can see in OUR own self-hosted blog interface. What kind of …I’d rather use Analytics, since it has more features.

*I also use MyBlogLog to check/compare the stats between Analytics (you can’t just have one stats tool).

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Steve's Tech Blog said on May 21st, 2007 at 6:42 pm

I don’t like that either(login in wp) but the stats are updated every 3 minutes unlike Analytics(few hours).

Also, the new version of Analytics does do a view of stats(hits and page views) for the current the day like the old version.

Nothing is stopping you of using both for the time being. That’s what I will do.

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Steve's Tech Blog said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:48 pm

Add the “not”
“the new version of Analytics does NOT do a view of stats(hits and ”

They said it’s coming when I emailed them. Until that feature is out, I guest it will be in beta longer.

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:18 am
Dave Starr --- ROI Guy said on May 21st, 2007 at 6:41 pm

Nice tip, John. The “big guns” like G-Analytics have their usefulness … the new Analytics dashboard is orders of magnitude better, but an “on blog” stat tool like this one can be very sueful, especially when fine tuning the blog itself … but there’s no aff link or AGLOCO tie-in? Your “evilness meter” is getting close to “E” *smile*

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Pallab said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:22 pm

I am using Feedburner Free, Firestats ( http://www.firestats.cc) and Statcounter (www.statcounter.com).

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Douglas Karr said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:29 pm

Some neat stuff there… they exclude your visits (nice), keep track of your comments on other WordPress blogs, and they have a nice tag search (and more) inside the interface. I’m pretty impressed!

Not only is this not a great way to raise awareness to WP, it’s also a great way to take advantage of the WP community that seems to be evolving. Notice this interface has avatars? I’m curious when those will be incorporated in a future version of WP.

Neat stuff!

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Hari said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:53 pm

Thanks for telling us.
I am installing this.
At last, one useful post on John Chow dot com. :mrgreen:

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Wahlau.NET said on May 21st, 2007 at 7:53 pm

this is great, nothing to lose to install it.

Too bad it is not integrated with my blog, maybe someone could do this.

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:21 am

definitely, we need an upgrade

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InvestorBlogger said on May 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm

I tried it a few days ago, I’m using WP.com’s stats… Neat interface!

Kenneth

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Success Online said on May 21st, 2007 at 8:27 pm

It’s something I think we can use alongside other methods of measurement. It’s good to experiment to see which one you like the best. Google is great no doubt. The myblog log I agree is also good.

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:22 am

true, but unless you pay, you wouldn’t get the real time stats though

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Ankur said on May 21st, 2007 at 8:31 pm

I love the graphs !!!

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:23 am

yes, it looks pro

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Ankur said on May 21st, 2007 at 8:32 pm

Is it only me or others also have the name missing when there is no link?

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Chris said on May 21st, 2007 at 8:39 pm

Can I use the same API key for 4 different blogs?

Or do I have to register 3 more new accounts with wordpress.com for each blog in order to see the stats?

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John Chow said on May 21st, 2007 at 9:12 pm

Try the same key and see what happens. I would assume it will work since my Akismet key worked.

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:25 am

it’d work, i think

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Chicago 2016 said on May 21st, 2007 at 9:21 pm

Whoa, thanks for pointing this out.

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Chicago 2016 said on May 21st, 2007 at 9:21 pm

It’s quite useful. Unfortunately, my personal blog - which is run on Vox - can’t run any stats trackers. How accurate is its Technorati rank?

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Taste of life said on May 21st, 2007 at 11:33 pm

Good feature…

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Wolf Stone said on May 21st, 2007 at 11:46 pm

if only i used wordpress….this plugin appears to have some useful features !!

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 am

definitely, it’s undoubtly the best blogging platform

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Adam Dempsey said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:07 am

I’ve installed it but hasn’t been running long enough to get any useful stats yet, but looks like it might be useful :D

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FinancialJungle.com said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:08 am

I’m using stats from iceRocket which is quite basic. Will check out the wordpress plugin. Thanks for the tips.

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Matt Huggins said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:31 am

John, you should check out WP-SlimStat. It’s a really convenient basic stats package that you can view through the WordPress Dashboard. You don’t need to log into WordPress.com or anything, just log into your site’s back-end like you normally do.

I use WP-SlimStat on my blog, and it offers a nice overview to what’s going on when I don’t feel like digging through the somewhat overwhelming Analytics data.

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 am

thanks matt, will try that out

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Sourav Sharma said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:40 am

I think, its too late for WP now.

GA is free and is beyond exceptional. And BTW, why we would want to add a presure of one more analytics on our server….or why to look at several places for your data when everything is there in GA. I am a huge proponent of GA and I dont think I would be using that plugin..

Sv

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website copywriter said on May 22nd, 2007 at 2:16 am

It should be up-to-par with the others, or at least serve as a good additional stats plugin.

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Rhys said on May 22nd, 2007 at 2:43 am

I wonder. I run the Wordpress Stat Tracker on one of my blogs. Can I still use the same API key to run it on one of my other ones?

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Monetize Your Blog said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:27 am

i think so, try it first

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IngaOz said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:39 am

I installed this plugin yesterday on my newest blog, so far - I am really happy with how I can track stats with it :)

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Markk said on May 22nd, 2007 at 4:55 am

I went from a Wordpress.com blog to a self-hosted blog, and as soon as I found out about the plugin I installed it straight away.

I still don’t have stats for the RSS feed though.

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Richard said on May 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 am

No love for the GoStats review? :sad:

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Mike Panic said on May 22nd, 2007 at 7:36 am

It’s nice I guess, but won’t take my API key… o well.

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InvestorBlogger said on May 22nd, 2007 at 7:48 am

It looks nice, has some interesti :razz: primarily! I have an account with them, but don’t really see the extra value yet! What does it get them?
I signed up to support Wordpress.org! Man, that’s some good software!
:razz:
Kenneth

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Just testing said on May 22nd, 2007 at 2:19 pm

I get this error when inserting my WordPress.com API key:

“parse error. not well formed”

Any ideas?

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ScottHayne said on May 23rd, 2007 at 8:04 am

My stats look a lot like that… MoL…

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Fashion Industry Ceo said on May 23rd, 2007 at 9:00 pm

John please let me know how you get the shots of the screen like that…I need it so that I can post some shots of screens from a program…please? thanks

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John Chow said on May 23rd, 2007 at 9:15 pm

You just hit the “Print Screen” key and paste it to MS Paint or any other image editing program to edit it.

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Fashion Industry Ceo said on May 24th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

Thanks good looking…you’re are the best! :mrgreen:

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Fashion Industry Ceo said on May 24th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

Under file>Print Preview
or
File>Print?…Im using firefox

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BustyBoots said on May 31st, 2007 at 8:47 am

I don’t want to wait till the end of Summer :( , I want it now. Who with me?
save your time and join me. ;)

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