Getting Started With Google Analytics
Published
May 29, 2009
Google Analytics makes it easy for you to track and keep tabs on the who, what, when, where, how and why of your blog’s readers. This 4.5 minute video talks you through setting up Analytics for your self-installed WordPress blog. WordPress.com users will not to be able to follow along.
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May 29, 2009 at 4:25 am |
Great tutorial – the footer.php bit was what I really needed to know. Thanks!
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May 29, 2009 at 2:30 pm |
i wasn’t able to follow the tutorial 😦
is it only for paid accounts?
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May 30, 2009 at 7:39 pm |
Google Analytics can only be used on a self-hosted blog, rather than a WordPress.com hosted account. WordPress.com users have our built-in stats, though
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June 1, 2009 at 8:18 am |
thanks for help. guess wordpress stats will do for me.
the video is swell both graphic and informative-wise
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June 2, 2009 at 12:13 am
Thank you! WordPress.com stats are pretty handy for most of us – it’s the fifth most popular plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs, in addition to being on every .com blog
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November 11, 2009 at 2:09 am
Michael, your comment here makes me feel like I must not fully understand the WordPress.com stat program. I havent’ been able to find a way to track time on site based on referring domain, paths within the site or many other pieces of critical information–basically, all I see is X number of people went to Y page and Z number of people came from A domain. There doesn’t even seem to be a way to tie them together (that is, to know which pages were visited from which domains). Your comment about the popularity of this system has me hopeful that I just don’t know how to use it, since so many free stats programs offer those basics.
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July 12, 2009 at 8:49 am |
Let me understand it 100%… I have a free wordpress blog. This means that I can not add any plugins to my blog?
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July 14, 2009 at 4:38 am
For security reasons, users cannot add their own plugins to blogs hosted by WordPress.com.
There’s a support topic with more information available here.
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May 29, 2009 at 4:36 pm |
Nice tutorial, now I can manage Analytics x WordPress together…
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May 29, 2009 at 5:25 pm |
Wow! Great video. How did you do the graphics, Michael?!
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May 30, 2009 at 7:38 pm |
Thanks, Ted. The graphical stuff was put together in After Effects mainly, with a goodly dash of inspiration from 50s classic modern.
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May 29, 2009 at 8:01 pm |
This is easy thing but it’s great tutorial for Beginners.
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May 29, 2009 at 8:47 pm |
Amazing video! Way better than I expected! BTW, I recommend the Google Analyticator plugin.
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June 2, 2009 at 12:20 am |
Thanks for the feedback and recommendation, Jason!
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May 29, 2009 at 9:17 pm |
This tute was painful to watch. You could cut the first minute and get a better video. Other than that, you could pretty much have conveyed this entire tute with three screenshots and a paragraph of text. Also, the tute is not valid for some non-default themes. (I.E., the place to insert the script is different).
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June 2, 2009 at 12:19 am |
Thanks for the feedback. We’d welcome any alternate versions dealing with the same procedure – the focus here is on a beginners introduction/overview. However, a briefer video might make a nice addition. We accept video submissions directly via the contact form at the top of this page if that’s of interest
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May 29, 2009 at 9:25 pm |
awesome.
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May 30, 2009 at 6:20 am |
Thanks very much. I too wanted to know about the footer part.
What is the advantage of using a plug in?
I guess it is that if you change theme the analytics code will move, too, but if you do it manually, it will have to be re-instated.
Is this right?
Many thanks
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May 30, 2009 at 7:45 pm |
Yes, that’s one reason you might prefer to use a plugin. Different plugins will offer you different features and advantages. It’s worth giving a few a try to see what works best for you – the star ratings are also a good indication of what other users found most useful
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May 31, 2009 at 3:07 am |
Why the video on Google Analytics doesn’t load in Google Chrome browser.
Anybody else has this issue ?
Thanks
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June 1, 2009 at 9:49 am |
This is great idea starting with google analytics.Because we should know about how many visitors visited to our site.
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June 3, 2009 at 9:58 am |
Hey Michael thanks for this video. That will helpful to me a lot. Thanks again!
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June 5, 2009 at 12:36 am |
Nice tutorial and really appreciated the footer bit as I was putting it in the index or pages part.
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June 5, 2009 at 1:34 am |
Hi there. Your video is so great, step-by-step is awesome! But when I tried to paste the google analytics into the footer plug-in, it says “you need to make this file writable before you can save your changes. See the Codex for more information.” What do I do? Thank you!
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June 5, 2009 at 8:40 pm |
You’ll find an explanation here in the Codex
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June 5, 2009 at 1:42 am |
Thanks, this was very helpful and easy on the eyes! Cheers!
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June 7, 2009 at 5:59 pm |
How Ted sayd, the video graphics are really great. But how did You do the Zoom in function? I really wonder how to enhance my tutorials with that function. Thanx for answer
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June 7, 2009 at 10:51 pm |
Thanks. Zooming can be achieved in most screencasting and post production applications (Screenflow, Camtasia etc. for screencasting), Final Cut, After Effects, Premiere etc for post-production. In this case I use After Effects for animation and Final Cut (via Screenflow) for the screencasting parts
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June 17, 2009 at 3:21 am |
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I had been struggling with this task. It’s done and now I just have to wait for it to show up. I’ve used Analytics on html sites of mine, but never on a Blog so the video was extremely helpful and exactly what I needed.
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June 18, 2009 at 1:45 am |
Glad to have helped!
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June 23, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
Nice video tutorial over here!
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June 24, 2009 at 3:16 am |
Need some help. When I click on Appearance, there is no Editor Option under “Appearance”. There is Edit CSS, which looks a lot different and I do not see any of the theme files on the right so I do not see the footer.php.
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June 24, 2009 at 5:39 am |
Are you running a blog on your own server or using WordPress.com? WordPress.com doesn’t include the ability to edit the PHP code of themes (which you need to do to add javascript), just the CSS design they’re “wrapped” in. This is for security reasons.
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June 25, 2009 at 9:07 pm |
Thanks for the Video!!! Just getting our blog started (launching in the next day or two); and I had another question: What app/program are you using to capture the video of your screen like that? It is awesome the way you can zoom in and out etc. — Is that captured on the fly or are you adding zooms when editing? Thanks again for the helpful post; I was debating plugin vs. manual and didn’t know if I needed to constantly keep adding the Google code to new posts etc. — the footer is great!
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June 26, 2009 at 6:25 am |
Thanks! I use a combination of Screenflow (to capture the screen with), Final Cut Pro (editing, zooms, pans etc. – but these can be done with Screenflow), After Effects for graphics/animated elements and Soundtrack Pro/Ableton Live for audio. Hope that helps!
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June 27, 2009 at 12:51 pm |
Big thanks for this great tutorial! Could you tell what music plays during the video, please?
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June 29, 2009 at 4:14 am |
Thank you! The music is royalty free stock from session musicians that I’ve pieced together rather than the work of a particular band or artist.
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July 23, 2009 at 6:40 pm |
Simple, step-be-step;
It was exactly what I needed.
Thank you!
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August 5, 2009 at 7:24 am |
This was a very cool video production. Very well done and it helped through loading GA successfully.
Thanks for putting the time in!
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August 8, 2009 at 9:34 pm |
What if I dont have a footer.php, on what file should i place code
Thanks
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August 10, 2009 at 1:44 am |
In your theme, find the template file that contains the closing “body” tag. Insert the Analytics code just before that tag. If you need additional assistance, please visit the WordPress.org support forums.
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August 15, 2009 at 8:11 pm |
great video
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September 4, 2009 at 2:00 am |
Thank you Michael. Is there a way I can subscribe to your tutorials. They save me so much time.
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September 4, 2009 at 2:49 am |
You can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed here: https://wordpress.tv/feed/
You can subscribe using Miro using the link on the home page of WordPress.tv (look below the featured area) if you prefer.
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September 17, 2009 at 3:33 pm |
Thanks for tutorial. Good job Michael…
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October 5, 2009 at 4:32 am |
great tutorial…. thank you.
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November 19, 2009 at 3:32 pm |
That was, really solid. Thank you.
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November 22, 2009 at 2:12 am |
All I wanted was to know how to install Google Analytics script. Got the answer in a flash. No hunting around a blog for an instruction. Just a simple show and tell. Great! Thank you.
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November 30, 2009 at 5:02 am |
My wordpress page doesn’t have an “editor” option NOR a “plug-in” option! What gives??? This is driving me crazy. They just are not on my dashboard. I want to use analytics!
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December 1, 2009 at 3:42 am |
Are you referring to a WordPress.org (self-hosted) blog, or a WordPress.com blog? The editor and plugin options are not available for WordPress.com blogs. If you’re running into issues with a self-hosted blog, you might want to ask around the WordPress.org support forums.
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December 2, 2009 at 8:52 am |
Good show mate 🙂 j/k I’m just a yank, but I loved the video, keep up the great work, would love to have tutorials as slick as this for my own site!
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December 17, 2009 at 6:15 pm |
Good job. Keep it up. This tutorial is better than the one on Youtube where I could NOT see where the code is added. Your instruction is very helpful. Thank you, Michael.
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January 18, 2010 at 4:36 pm |
Mate, at last!
An entertaining and well put together tutorial video for WordPress.
After months of wading through dry, unimaginative and, quite frankly, infuriatingly tedious videos I can do naught but applaud this video.
This is a far cry from the usual staple of straight-up filmed screens with a whiney voiceover.
Also, very informative in a helpfully direct manner.
Nicely done.
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January 31, 2010 at 4:24 am |
Mike,
If you have several blogs with WP can you track them with just one account? or do you need to open different accounts with Google to do so?
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February 1, 2010 at 7:23 pm |
If you have several self-hosted blogs, you can track them using a single Google Analytics account, but you will have to create a new tracker for each one.
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January 31, 2010 at 3:11 pm |
Thank you for this great video. You made my day : )
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February 1, 2010 at 8:26 pm |
Thank you Ryan
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February 28, 2010 at 5:28 pm |
I only understood this was a .org plugin after reading the comments even though I know that .org and .com are very different animals. Maybe it’d be clear if I went back through the video and listened more carefully.
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March 5, 2010 at 4:58 am |
That’s a great video presentation. Though it takes a while to load, the video is worth lot more ! Thanks for sharing !
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June 1, 2010 at 4:24 am |
I spent alot of time trying to do this previously and this video saved my bacon.
In the footer.php? Geeze, no wonder I was so frustrated trying to get this ‘simple’ thing done!
Rock on guys!
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June 7, 2010 at 3:10 pm |
Excellent video…very clear and easy to follow…and even fun. Thanks.
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July 20, 2010 at 9:00 am |
Great video, really well produced. What do you use?
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August 1, 2010 at 1:11 am |
What if my theme does not have that section in the footer.php? then where in footer.php should I copy my code to?
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August 2, 2010 at 1:54 pm |
Theoretically, the GA code can go anywhere as long as it loads, but it’s best to have it as close to the end of the page as possible so it won’t interfere with loading the page.
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August 7, 2010 at 7:15 am |
EVERYTHING ON WORDPRESS is different. I can not follow this steps. WordPress has a whole new web page.
Please make a new video!
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August 10, 2011 at 6:28 pm |
Great THX!!
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April 22, 2012 at 9:45 am |
Ok, i learned some Google Analytics things here, thank you
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April 12, 2016 at 11:06 am |
I think this is the best google tool on the market.. It saves me a lot of marketing $$ when you know how to use it a the proper way!!
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