Tag Archive for 'utility'

Google Analyticator – WordPress Plugin

Hot Plugin, Cool FeaturesTypically, when Fresh Start Creative installs a new WordPress blogsite, we also set up a new Google Analytics account to track valuable user statistics for the site. Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. With this information, you can improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web. Learn more about it here.

Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. The plugin eliminates the need to edit your template code and provides a comprehensive set of options to customize how it works with your site. It supports all of the tracking mechanisms that Google Analytics supports such as external link tracking, tracking without counting administrative users, and other advanced tracking methods.

Google Analyticator supports the following features:

  • Standard Google Analytics tracking support
  • An admin dashboard widget that displays a graph of the last 30 days of visitors, a summary of site usage, the top pages, the top referrers, and the top searches—right on your WordPress Dashboard
  • External link tracking of all links on the page, including links not managed by WordPress
  • Support for hiding Administrator visits without affecting Google Analytics’ site overlay feature
  • Support for any advanced tracking code Google provides
  • Allows code to be placed in the footer to ensure faster load times
  • Complete control over options; disable any feature if needed

Learn more at the Google Analyticator home page, or on the WordPress.com Plugin page

Published on Thursday, November 12, 2009 in Blogging and Recommended tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Feed Stats for WordPress – WordPress Plugin

Hot Plugin, Cool FeaturesEvery WordPress installation that Fresh Start Creative does incorporates an RSS feed. The feed provides users with an easy option to subscribe to your content and be automatically notified when you post updates and new content. We also set up a free Feedburner account for our clients and link their feeds to the service.

FeedBurner’s services allow publishers who already have a feed to improve their understanding of—and relationship with—their audience. Passing your feed through FeedBurner lets you realize a whole new set of benefits. You can learn more about  about RSS feeds and he Feedburner services here.

Feed Stats for WordPress is a plugin that allows you to view your FeedBurner feed stats right from the “Feed Stats” page in the “Dashboard” section of WordPress.

Currently, this plugin allows you to view the following types of statistics:

  • Subscribers
  • Hits
  • Reach (see the FAQ section for more information about this)
  • Item Clickthroughs
  • Item Views

Learn more at the Feed Stats for WordPress home page, or on the WordPress.com Plugin page

Published on Thursday, November 12, 2009 in Blogging and Recommended tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Excerpt Editor – WordPress Plugin

Hot Plugin, Cool FeaturesExcerpt Editor provides a convenient place for creating and editing all summary excerpts on your site. It can also add custom excerpts for pages (not possible without a plugin).

Features:

  • auto-creating excerpts when publishing new Posts and Pages
  • displaying customisable excerpts from the content for posts without an excerpt
  • replacing the content for all archive and tags pages with excerpts (eliminates content duplication for SEO).

This last item is one of it’s most valuable functions. When search engines are looking at your site to index the content, some of your content can appear to show as duplicated—once in the original post, and then again on archives pages where they are listed together with other articles (archive pages are anyplace on your site where posts show up in a running list… like the Blog page, category pages, and search results pages).

Many search engines are designed to view anything that’s duplicate content as an attempt to game the system. The rationale being that the site may be purposefully stacking the deck by repeating important content in he hopes that it will be ranked higher. Given that possibility, the search engines will then depreciate the ranking in response.

By using the Excerpt Editors setting to automatically excerpt the first 70 to 130 words on all archive pages, it guarantees that the copy is only presented in full ONCE on the actual post page. On the archive pages, the excerpted copy is appended with a helpful “continue reading link” so that the human users can easily hop directly to the post page to read the entire article.

Learn more at the Excerpt Editor home page, or on the WordPress.com Plugin page


Published on Thursday, November 12, 2009 in Blogging and Recommended tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .