In its first twenty hours or so, Automattic Stats was blogged more than 50 times and downloaded more than 1,500 times. That’s not bad for a Saturday night launch!
I heard it from a number of users that they couldn’t see their stats due to a “403″ message. I’ve replaced that message with something more helpful. Victims of the 403 should try again now.
While reading the many blog posts about Automattic Stats, I found the most common complaints to be about the way we serve the stats reports on your WordPress.com dashboard rather than your self-hosted dashboard. I’m still pretty sure we made the right decision for the following reasons:
I think that’s enough justification. A few users have suggested ways to make the reporting more convenient. The most common suggestion, and the easiest to implement, was to add a link back to the blog’s own dashboard. You’ll find this new link near the top of every report page.
Some folks have asked whether Automattic Stats can be used with WordPress versions prior to 2.1 or WordPress MU. Broad compatibility would be nice but it is not my goal.
Use of the Automattic Stats plugin with WordPress 2.0.x is untested and strongly discouraged. I have not tested the plugin against any versions in the 2.0 branch because the plugin relies on some things that were not implemented in 2.0. Off the top of my head, $wp_the_query is required and admin_notices is recommended.
Use of the Automattic Stats plugin with WordPress MU is untested and strongly discouraged. Of course, nothing prevents hard-core hackers from testing and updating the plugin for use with MU. I just don’t support it.
Either of these causes could see a champion appear, in which case I may be interested in seeing the results of your research. I will not answer questions about the source code. If you can’t read it, you are not the champion.
Now let’s give this stats thing a few more days and then we’ll see where it stands.
May 7, 2007 at 1:37 am
[...] brief initial thoughts… The name is “automattic stats“, not “wordpress stats”, and unless I’m missing something, there’s no [...]
May 7, 2007 at 3:08 am
Andy, I have zero complaints about this. The only improvement I could think of while looking through my first day’s stas was that when I look at the traffic report/graph for individual posts, it would be nice to have sub panels under the graph showing me:
- referrers for this item (not from my blog)
- search engine keywords for entries to this item
- exit clicks for this item (external to my blog)
- next page clicks for this item (internal to my blog)
That would tell me how each item is performing in terms of search engine optimization and conversion as well as whether others are linking to individual posts.
All in all, a fine, fine tool. Thank you so much for providing it!
BTW: I have blogged on it at my site.
“Blog Stats: Get your info-jones on with weblog traffic metrics”
Regards,
Rich
Stats Plugin « WordPress.com Says:BlogRodent
May 7, 2007 at 4:00 am
[...] Follow-up by Andy. [...]
May 7, 2007 at 5:08 am
I like them a lot! Thanks!
May 7, 2007 at 6:43 am
it is a strange objection, since most stats providers require you to visit their sites to view stats. it is, i suppose, atypical for a wordpress-only plugin to require it, though.
May 7, 2007 at 9:32 am
A superb plugin - thanks!
May 7, 2007 at 10:06 am
I’m glad you chose to serve the stats on the WordPress.com dashboard. Having the stats of all my blogs located in one central location is a bonus. I only have two suggestions that would kick this stats plugin to the “uber” level:
Laughing Squid » WordPress Releases Stats Plugin Says:1. On our local dashboard along with the link to the global dashboard, display a minimal list of stats (such as total visits, total pages viewed etc.)
2. Any chance of a feed tracker coming online in the future?
May 7, 2007 at 10:31 am
[...] Andy has posted a follow-up on the stats plugin launch with more on the reasons behind the centralized reporting. tags: WordPress (T) , Matt Mullenweg [...]
May 7, 2007 at 11:00 am
For what it’s worth, stats seems to work perfectly fine in WPMU. Of course I only have a half dozen blogs under it right now, and there’s not any traffic yet to speak of, but it does appear to work fine from a technical perspective at least.
Wolly Weblog Says:May 7, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Automattic Stats
Sempre alla ricerca delle statistiche migliori, io uso google analytics e sitemeter ma non mi hanno mai soddisfatto più di tanto. Mi piacevano molto le statistiche che vedevo nella dashboard del mio account wordpress.com (che ho aperto per avere la ap…
May 7, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Great work and a great launch, I am using it on a few of my blogs and very much enjoying it.
Less work for my server, more nice graphs
Any thoughts about adding in feed stats data?
Top Posts « WordPress.com Says:Thanks
May 7, 2007 at 6:58 pm
[...] Automattic Stats, Day One In its first twenty hours or so, Automattic Stats was blogged more than 50 times and downloaded more than 1,500 times. […] [...]
May 7, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Actually, it won’t work with any theme that doesn’t have the
I found my blog didn’t have that. I added it and now I can see the stats
May 8, 2007 at 6:08 am
Centralized collecting and reporting is a deal breaker for me. I have quite reliable and very well connected servers myself. I never use wordpress.com, so wordpress.com it is not that central for me. Most of all, just like I prefer to use WP on my own servers and not wordpress.com, I prefer to collect and report my own stats. - Free as in free speech. - Plus I don’t want the (visitor) data of my site been collected somewhere else.
Why not give people the freedom to choose?
May 8, 2007 at 11:02 am
thanks Andy, very nice plugin.
any idea of when the API will be made public. Would be nice to have “top posts” etc. listings in my sidebar based on these stats.
Oluniyi David Ajao Says:May 8, 2007 at 5:15 pm
WordPress Stats Plugin
Do you run a blog powered by WordPress software? Well, it might interest you to learn that WordPress.org has now released a plugin that works with WordPress-powered blogs that are not hosted on WordPress.com
I downloaded and installed the plugin just y…
May 8, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Thanks a lot for this, Andy. While I used Google Analytics for a while now, I’m finding that the WordPress.com stats are more relevant for blogs. I look forward to an API!
Få wp.com statistikk på din vanlige WordPress blogg | Norsk WP Says:May 9, 2007 at 2:57 pm
[...] Men nÃ¥ er den altsÃ¥ tilgjengelig for “alle”, dvs. hvis du har en WP 2.1+ installasjon. Andy Skelton, en av utviklerne har frarÃ¥det Ã¥ bruke den pÃ¥ WP2.0 og WPMU. [...]
May 9, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Seemed to work fine on WPMu. Removed it though as I had hardcoding in my own API for testing and didn’t want to leave it in there due to lisencing issues. If we had, folks would have to log in to wp.com under my own account.
May 9, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Why not give people the freedom to choose?
Folks have freedom to choose. Just use another stats system. Urchin/ Google Analytics is the same way. All the data resides on Google’s servers. I just use out own stats program.