Have you been wondering who’s coming to your WordPress site? From where? When? and How? If your ready to take your WordPress site more seriously, and start looking into the people that are looking at you, then you need to be able to view your statistics. The best way to do this is using the WordPress.com Stat or Google Analytics plugin.

Plugin: WordPress.com Stats

WordPress Plugin Page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Installation: Through WP dashboard or FTP

Difficulty: Easy, (getting the API Key could be simpler)

Rating: Above Average (Over 700 Ratings)

WordPress.com Stats is a user friendly, easy to read statistics plugin. By linking to a WordPress.com account it keeps track of your visitor statistics.

To Install WordPress.com Stats:

1. Scroll down to “Add New” under the plugins section on the left side panel
2. Search “Wordpress.com Stats”
   1. Verify the right plugin it should be created by Automattic, and be at version 1.7 or higher
3. Click install, then activate it.

To Configure WordPress.com Stats:

1. Scroll down to plugins on the left side panel where it says, “Wordpress.com stats” and click
2. Click the link, “Get WordPress.com API Key” (You will have to have a WordPress.com account to get the API Key)
3. Once you get the key type it into the plugin and click save options.
4. You should now have a statistics monitor on your dashboard.

WordPress.com Stats is easy to use, but is somewhat limited and can seem a little unreliable. Highly recommended is Google Analytics for all websites. Below are directions for using it with WordPress.

Plugin: Google Analytics for WordPress

WordPress Plugin Page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

Installation: Through WP dashboard or FTP

Difficulty: Easy

Rating: High (Over 400 Ratings)

You can sign up by going to https://www.google.com/analytics. You must have an account before we can continue. This is where you will view your stats from your WordPress blog. *You can use Google Analytics for multiple websites and keep track of all of them in this one account.

To Install Google Analytics for WordPress:

1. Sign in to your WordPress dashboard
2. Scroll down to plugins and click “Add New”
3. Find the search area and type in “Google Analytics for WordPress”
   1. Verify it’s the right plugin, it should be created by Joost de Valk, have over 400 ratings and be above version 4.0
4. Click “Install Now”
5. After it installs, make sure to activate it

To Configure Google Analytics for WordPress:

1. Connect with your Analytics account by looking under “Settings” on the left side panel in the Your WordPress dashboard for “Google Analytics”
2. You can now authenticate by linking to your Google Analytics or you can enter your the UA Code manually (read the directions carefully to get the right information).
3. To save, scroll down and click “Update Google Analytics Settings”.

Note: To view Google Analytics on your WordPress dashboard install plugin “Google Analytics Dashboard ”

David Blane

David writes for a couple different websites that work with hosting and consumer reviews. He brings real-world application to harder to understand concepts in order to help people learn about specific subject matter. He also knows HTML, CSS and PHP to help out with building and configuring sites.