Counting on a web stats enthusiast

Just a quick note for those who are following this blog.  There is a new version of the GoStats plugin.

Web counters are internet applications which you can install into your webpage to track the traffic your site receives.

When you install the web counter HTML code into your page, it will be invoked by each visitor to your site.  Their visit data will be logged for you so that when you view your traffic report you will see an easy to read and understand report based on your traffic.  Generally these reports are in near real-time.

Some web counters are visible and will display the total number of hits which your website has received on your page.  Some are invisible and will be completely hidden from view.

Most services will give you a regular email update of your website’s traffic activity.

I recommend that you try GoStats; it’s a great feature rich service which is very easy to use.

If you are still using web log analyzers (awstats, webalizer etc…) to collect and process the hits to your website, listen up!

Web counters (or site trackers) are able to do the following (which the log analyzers simply cannot):

• track advanced stats about your visitors (such as monitor resolutions, window sizes, cookie tracking, javascript, java, etc…)
• wont slow down your server since all logs and reports are stored on a remote server
• widely used and well maintained: the interface is much easier to use and so is the service on the whole
• third party web tracking is more trustworthy for potential advertisers.  (more likely to land the advertising contract based on third party data)
• near realtime: old weblog processors cannot efficiently process the traffic data for your site like trackers can.
• You can optinally display a count of hits on your page; often this is a great indicator to your visitors that you care about the amount of traffic you get.

In the end, even the most diehard web-log-analyzer users will at the very least use both a tracker and an analyzer.  Most will just use the webcounter itself.

By the way, have you created a GoStats account yet?

For those of you who have a WordPress blog and want to know how many people are actually viewing it, here’s the perfect thing for you.

GoStats.com offers a free and easy to use hit counter, perfect for keeping track of your website stats for your blog.

All you have to do is follow these simple steps inorder to start.

1. Visit GoStats.com and click on “Sign Up” located on the left side of the page below user name and password
2. Fill in all the fields and click “sign up”
3. When you sign up, you will be able to add your site(s)
4. Click on “Add new site” and fill out the fields
5. You can add as many sites as you want
6. After adding your site(s), click on “Get Code” – if this does not show up, then go to “My sites”, located on the left side of the page
7. Under your site(s) listed are several options, click on “get code”
8. You’re given four choices of counter styles (if you don’t want the counter visible, consider upgrading to GoStats Pro) there are plenty of styles and colors to choose from
9. Choose one and click on it
10. You will be taken to a page with the counter code.  Copy the HTML counter code (the second code offered)
11. Return to your account information in WordPress
12. Click on “Presentation” and click on “Sidebar Widgets”
13. Click and Drag “Text 1” into your Sidebar
14. Open “Text 1”
15. Leave Title Blank and insert the GoStats HTML code
16. Exit the “Text 1” Box and Click on “Save Changes”
17. Refresh your blog page and voilà your GoStats hit counter should be visible

Now you can sit back and continue blogging

Don’t forget to view your stats, you can do this by accessing your GoStats account, and click on “my sites” and “stats”

If you choose to receive weekly emails from GoStats about your hits, please add support@gostats.com to your safe email addresses to prevent it from ending up in your Spam folder