When I was brand new to Wordpress, one of the things that immediately impressed me was the sheer ease with which I could add Google Analytics code to a site.  I have worked with pretty large static HTML sites in the past — along the lines of thousands of pages. [...]]]>

Wordpress+GA Plugin = Analytics-bliss!

When I was brand new to Wordpress, one of the things that immediately impressed me was the sheer ease with which I could add Google Analytics code to a site.  I have worked with pretty large static HTML sites in the past — along the lines of thousands of pages. Because of the way these traditional were managed we really needed to add the Google Analytics code manually to the bottom of each page. It was important to remember to add it, at least below the title tag, if not in the footer, so that the Analytics javascript could capture the web page title for later reporting.  Often it required a series of global find/replace operations that were tedious and potentially error-prone.  Optionally, we would use a server-side include:  A single file that was “included” in the main web template, so it would be loaded for every page on the site.   That works as along as all your web files are using the same template.  We also had to remember to tell Google Analytics about our local network addresses, so that our own web development activities weren’t artificially pumping up web traffic reports.

With Wordpress…. gone is all that fuss. There are a number of plugins to choose from that will capture web traffic from your site — any of which will automagically plunk the Google Analytics code where it belongs, in every page of your site.  Also be sure and look for a feature in your plugin which will mask the “G/A” code when you are logged in and creating content or administering the site — giving you more accurate reports about visitors rather than developers!

Of course before you take any of these steps of plugin installation you’ll need to establish a Google Analytics account and profile for your domain/URL.   After you do that, you’ll simply take the UA number provided by Google paste it into the appropriate plugin-in configuration menu on your Wordpress site and activate. Almost done! Finally, you just go return to your Google Analytics profile set up and hit the “verify” link to tell Google that you actually have the code successfully installed…. and NOW you are done.

If you are on the hunt for a good plugin to do this, there are many out there, but be sure and check out Google Analyticator, which will not only track the pages of your site, but will also track outbound links.  It won’t butter your toast, but that’s probably in the next version.