Lies; Damned Lies; And WordPress Visitor Statistics.

By 3rd March 2014 January 22nd, 2016 iControlWP: Manage WordPress Better

Site Statistics

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

As WordPress site administrators we have an almost crack-like addiction to site visitor statistics.

We love them. We hate them. They draw us in, and repel us, all at once.

We know we should be doing a million other things than checking how many site visitors we have, but we can’t help it.

But let’s face it, they’re fun useful.

So we’ve created a new feature for all iControlWP WordPress Admins – Simple Site Statistics.

And no, you don’t need any extra monies or “Business” / “Pro” / “Enterprise” plans to get them – you have them today!

What are iControlWP Site Statistics?

Perhaps it’s easier to say what they’re not: they’re not Google Analytics, nor Kissmetrics, or any other in-depth analytics tool.

They are simple visitor numbers that allow you to quickly see your daily and monthly visitor count, and then show you your most popular content per-day, and per-month.

How does iControlWP Site Statistics work?

They’re very simple.

Someone visits your site, we look at the URL and then we increment a visitor tally for that URL.  Under the hood it’s a little more complex, but that’s the basic principle.

Then, within the iControlWP control panel, for any site you manage with us, you click the statistics tab and we show you some nice little charts.

Is there a performance penalty for using Site Statistics?

I wont lie to you… as soon as you add anything new to a WordPress site, you add more processing. More processing = more time.

This is why you must be super lean with your WordPress plugins and be careful which ones you use, and which ones you retain active.

Our site statistics module is designed to be as lean as we can make it and only turned on when you enable the feature.

Also, to ensure there is minimal interruption to your visitors, we’ve put all statistics processing at the “end”.

The end?  Basically WordPress has lots of “hooks” which we can use to jump into certain stages of the loading of a page.  One of those is called “shutdown” which is right before WordPress finishes all it’s work (by then the web page is already displayed to the visitor).

It’s in the ‘shutdown‘ hook that we process statistics so we don’t interrupt any normal loading of the page.

We do this because we know that although any impact of our statistics is tiny, your visitor experience is much more important.

If you use other WordPress management systems that offers site statistics, check with them how they implement theirs 😉

How can I turn on Statistics for my sites in iControlWP?

See our FAQ section about Site Statistics for more information on our statistics feature.

To enable site statistics on a particular site, navigate to the site statistics tab for the site and click to enable. Once it reloads it will immediately start collecting site visitor data.

iControlWP - enabling site statistics module

Enabling Site Statistics

It’s as simple and as easy to do as that! 🙂

What statistics would you like to see?

We’re aware that these statistics while informative and altogether cool, don’t tell you everything you need to know about your site’s performance.

What would you like to see in a statistics module such as this? It wont be a replacement for your Google Analytics, but it can provide useful, easily accessible, overviews of your sites’ visitor information.

Join the discussion 2 Comments

  • Paul…
    Would you consider adding in some additional “external” stats for our WordPress sites such as Page/Domain Authority, # of backlinks coming into the site, etc.

    Things that professional SEO’s use to measure success.

    Thanks…keep the updates coming!

    View Comment
    • Paul G. says:

      Hey Steve,

      This is actually in development and will be available as an addon sometime in April/May. There may be an option for beta access if we get it done earlier. I’ll keep you posted.

      Thanks for the suggestion!
      Paul.

      View Comment

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