Feb
19
(2008)
on disabling excessive stats
Filed under: general. Tags: feedburner, google analytics, plugins, stats, wordpress.
I just disabled two separate blog stats packages, each for a different reason. This move was partially inspired by the upcoming “F*** Stats - Make Art!” session on the docket at Northern Voice.
First, I disabled the FeedBurner FeedSmith integration plugin. This is a handy way to automatically redirect requests for RSS feeds to the FeedBurner service. I had decided to use FeedBurner as a way to reduce the load on my Dreamhost shared server - the feed would be cached by FeedBurner and served from there, removing a tonne of requests off-site. It did the trick, but at the cost of handing control of my blog’s feed over to a third party (who has since been absorbed by Google). One direct negative side effect of the FeedBurner plugin is that it seemed to interfere with tag- and category-based feeds. That shouldn’t be a problem anymore. I’ll miss some of the stats, but I really don’t need that much data. Now, how do I get the 1494 people sucking the feed off of FeedBurner to come back to the real source? FeedBurner offers to put up an ugly “BLOG MOVED. PLEASE UPDATE SUBSCRIPTIONS” notice to nudge people into resubscribing to the proper URL. But they provide pretty seamless redirection to get people TO FeedBurner. A bit of a roach motel syndrome going on there. You can check in, but you can never leave. (OK. ‘never’ is a little overblown, but it’s not realistic to expect everyone to update their subscriptions - I can’t remember the last time I did that…)
The second plugin to get switched off today is the very cool, extremely addictive, but ultimately creepy Blog Voyeur plugin. It didn’t track any additional info, but presented a list of people who have commented on the blog, and the last page they’ve visited, thanks to the “remember me” cookie. It’s not too invasive, but I felt like I should put on a trenchcoat while viewing the Voyeur report page. It didn’t help that feeling much by inserting “YOU ARE BEING WATCHED” on the comment submission form - I agree that notification is necessary, but maybe with less-creepy wording?
I’m not giving up on stats altogether, but am limiting them to just Google Analytics and Wordpress.com Stats. They’re both generic and anonymous stats packages, without the level of creepiness of Blog Voyeur, and the loss of control involved with FeedBurner.
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14 Responses to “on disabling excessive stats”
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Well, you should never be giving out that feedburner URL directly. You should be redirecting from a URL / domain you can control. As well, Feedburner allows you to map a CNAME to a feedburner URL as well. This has always been the case, and specifically to block any hint of roach motel-ness.
I like feedburner because I can keep arbitrarily changing up my feeds and then just updating feedburner and no on is the wiser — specifically to prevent what you’re talking about.
D’Arcy,
I use my server’s AWStats for some in depth look- but this little plugin- PopStats- http://www.deltablog.com/popstats/
(there is an english version somewhere) is super handy for seeing what’s up on the site- and where people are coming from.
I’d still like to know how many people are subscribed to my feed- but I think Google Analytics has some info on that- can’t remember right now.
Feedburner was causing you too much grief- and yet another resource hog- good riddance.
@boris: agreed - I didn’t directly give out the URL of the feed via feedburner, but think the FeedBurner plugin for WP may have done that. I’ll know for sure if my Feedburner stats drop off suddenly
I hadn’t looked at the feed CNAME DNS stuff - I might play with that. Thanks for the pointer.
@david: Akismet still hates you, man. What did you do to piss off Automattic so badly?
Feedburner should have been an anti-resource hog, turning lots of requests into a single GET from FeedBurner’s processing/caching servers… I think I’ve hit my cap for stats - if I add any more, I’ll just obsess. Best to get a general feel for it, and see referrers, than have detailed metrics on every conceivable obscure piece of data. I’m pretty good about using Analytics just as an overview (mostly to watch for spikes than to see details)…
D’Arcy- I don’t know what Akismet doesn’t like- I’ve tried to post a few times on Ryan Boren’s site- with no luck… I think he hates me too.
I was trying to point out that I’m a candidate who uses WordPress- granted, I’m not running for president-
I don’t know what’s causing it.
Thanks for keeping me informed on the progress of all of this…
@david: the akismet folks say they’ve rectified whatever needed to be rectified, and you should be good to go. Care to give it a try?
If you’ve fixed this- you really are THE MAN.
So- here’s the test.
wow- it posted instantly…. care to share what the problem was?
.biz?
my IP?
Server configuration?
wahoo! that’s how it’s supposed to work
all I did was use the akismet contact form, and sent them your info from the rejected comments. I think they just whitelisted you somehow…
hopefully this also means you’re clear to comment on other Akismet-protected sites without interference. Just don’t spam, or it could come back to me for vouching for you
D’Arcy, I would NEVER SPAM.
I’ll have to look for the akismet contact form- we’ve been deleting Akismet on all installations- using Spam Karma- but that may have to change…
Thanks again.
@david: the contact form lives at http://akismet.com/contact/ and I just selected the “support of feature request option” and provided the info from one of your comments.
So my question is, how much do you obsess over your stats in the first place?
much less than I used to. but it’s a struggle to resist the impulse to check the number of subscribers/pageviews/visits on a regular basis. I was much more addicted back when I used SiteMeter, because it provided a “who’s on your site RIGHT NOW” interface that was absolutely addictive.
Reading logs does not add value to your blog…
Why do people read blogs? Well there are a few different reasons, the number one being that they get some value from reading your blog. If this is the case, then pray tell how does reading a log add value to your blog?…