WordPress.com Stats for Almost Everyone

WordPress has launched an official stats plugin named Automattic Stats. It a stats plugin that ties into WordPress.com to track your visitors and works well, but it’s not available for everyone.

One of the WordPress.com exclusive features is the ability to get blog and feed stats in your dashboard. Everything from the number feed reads to incoming links, keywords, clicks and top posts. A great feature that was sadly missing from anyone who installed WordPress on their own servers. That was until recently when the Automattic Stats plugin was released.

The plugin is a snap to install. Just upload the file into your plugins directory, then put in your WordPress.com API. Yes, you need one of those. If you use Akismet, then you already have one and don’t need another. If you don’t have one, signup for a WordPress.com account and they’ll give you one. After that, just sit back and wait for your stats to roll in.

There are a few downsides to the stats plugin though. The main one being that it’s not integrated into your WordPress install. You have to go to your WordPress.com dashboard to actually see your stats. It does add a tab on your dashboard screen though, so it’s only a click away.

You also need WordPress 2.1 or greater to use the plugin. This is unfortunate as I control a lot of blogs that are still in the 2.0.x stage as I’m unsure of the status of UTW and upgrading to 2.1. If you want the stats, you’ll need to upgrade though.

So far, it’s too soon to tell how well these stats stand up. I’ve been trying out lots of different stats programs recently and am excited to give this one a spin. Hopefully it’ll live up to my expiations.

[tags]stats,utw,Automattic-Stats[/tags]