I was looking at some blog statistics tonight, and found this interesting one of my blog. You can view it in other ways, but the link should take you to a picture of the USA with dots for the last 100 vistors. There are a few I recognize (Bret Capranica of The Capranica and FIDE-O was the last visitor, which I know because of a red dot and his comment on my previous post), and then a few I have no idea. I've known for a while from reading incoming IP addresses that someone is reading from the Tampa area, but I don't know who. I have my pal Chris in Seattle, someone from Salt Lake City (I suppose because of my Mormon cult stuff last week), a couple from Chicago (KP?), one in Texas that is Paul, at least two in my area that are Banana and Pete (BTW Pete, you need to make that your School ID photo and your Blog Profile photo!), and then a bunch I have no clue on. Especially those on the East Coast.
I appreciate all who find there way here, and welcome you all to come back and visit and leave comments. I started this blog as a place to express my thoughts and to collect thoughts of other people who I felt were worth preserving for my own reference, and thus far I think it has been successful in that.
3 comments:
This observer enjoys your comments - keep 'em coming?
I need to figure out how to get those stats for my blog. Is there an easy way to do it?
yep, certainly it's easy or I wouldn't do it. It's mostly simple cut and paste of some html into your blog template.
First: Make a back up copy of your blog's template - cut and paste into Notepad and save it as a simple text file. If you click on the blogger link (top left of your blog's homepage) it'll take you to your blogger dashboard. Click on settings, then on the template tab. Save that html before you do any editing, just in case you bomb and screw something up you'll have an archived backup copy.
Second: Sitemeter.com - sign up, follow their instructions. You'll have to play around with it a bit as to where you would want it to be. Most people just put it at the bottom of their blog, as they are the only ones interested in it. Sitemeter will track how many visitors, and where from. That is where I got the graphic of the USA with people visiting my site. This is free, but you can purchase an account and get tons more options. So far I am only using the free version.
Third: blogpatrol.com - sign up, follow their instructions. Same as above. This will allow you to see where (via IP addresses) people are coming in from, what key word searches people are using to find your site (plus which search engine they used), what screen setting they are viwing with, what OS they are using, what browser, what site they came in from (I get lots of visitors from my comments on other blogs, and I can see which comments bring people in), plus other info. All very interesting stuff.
I check info a few times a month at most. I can see reading patterns (I have fewer readers on Sundays than any other day of the week for instance). Basically it moves you from the base model blog up a few steps.
Then when you've made your changes (remember to check them out first with the preview button on the template screen) and you're happy with it, click "Save Template Changes" and then on the next screen click on the light blue box "Republish Index". I suggest republish index because that just makes the changes to your framework. By clicking the dark blue button "republish" it republishes every component of your blog, posts and all, and this can be annoying for anyone reading via RSS feed (like me!) because it shows every post you have made as "new" since you started blogging. Plus it takes more time to process when you hit the dark blue "republish".
I think that's the best info I can give you. I can answer any questions you might have beyond that as you start to do this.
Big Chris
Spectacular - thanks for the help.
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