If you’re like me, you’d like to know whether anyone is paying attention to what you have to say online. There are plugins for WordPress that will make this information available through the wp-admin pages. There are also tools such as AWStats that your hosting provider can likely provide. If you’ve outgrown those options, you may get what you need from Google Analytics. Whether you need it or just want it because you can, here are the basic steps:


There are several plugins available, but for MacksMind I chose the one offered by Joost de Valk. You need to download the .zip file and load its contents into your site’s wp-content/plugins directory. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find a new ‘Google Analytics’ option on the Plugins tab. Click that and the first thing you’ll probably notice is analytics is inactive because it needs your ‘Analytics User Account.’ That’s fine for now, it’s time to jump to Google. :-)

At Google Analytics you can register for free account and create a website profile. You only need one account, so if you already have an account just add another website profile! Once your website profile has been created, you need to locate your site key in the example code provided. It will look something like this:


<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-1234567-2";
urchinTracker();
</script>

The piece you need is the UA-1234567-2 in the example above. Go back to the ‘Google Analytics’ page of your site and type in this key. This creates the linkage between you pages and Google. Once, you ‘Update Settings’ your account is active!

The ‘Analytics Settings’ page at Google gives you feedback regarding whether data is being received. Be aware of two things though. By default, your page doesn’t send data when you’re an admin viewing your own site. That a Good Thing™, but it also means you need to Log Out from you site in order to test that Google is receiving data. Also, the Reports section is only updated once every day. From my experience, it seems that the previous days data is always ready when I wake up, but don’t waste your time clicking refresh every 5 minutes from midnight until 3am. That would be Madness™.

That’s really about it. Your site sends the information to Google, and Google gives you more ways to slice and dice it than most people will use.