Monday, November 3, 2008

Just a simple way to track my Blog's visitors

Ever since I started my blog at the volkskrantblog.nl, the stats have been tracked by Motigo, the VKB-preferred tracker company.
However, since day one this tracker didn't really do what I wanted it to, but I didn't have the time or energy to dive into the complicated system with separate java-scripts-based page ID's.


What I wanted was basically a simple tracker, showing me which blog entries have been read by which visitor. I don't really need a spiffy graph with all my visitors represented as flags on a gently spinning globe. I would much rather be able to identify which pages are being read (and which ones aren't) without having to resort copying and pasting a separate piece of code into each of the 150+ blog-entries I had written so far. And I'd like to know which days of the week and which times of the day are the most busy.

I most definitely do not want to make Tracker-Management an important time-consuming part of my responsibilities in maintaining a blog. Just paste one piece of code somewhere and w00t, done. So essentially the tracker I had so far has never came even close to working the way I wanted it to.


Premium Subscription...

To add insult to injury, I have recently been the recipient of an extensive series of emails, written with a cascading sense of urgency, where Motigo went from 'inviting' to 'bullying' me into becoming a Premium Subscriber. Wink Wink. Marketing speak for “Show Me The Money!”
After which my Tracker was disabled...

So instead of having to pay for a service that is non-satisfactory in the first place, I figured it might be a nice experiment to go ahead and build my own visitor tracker. Nothing fancy, but just something that reports what I want it to report. And as little installation hassles as possible.

So what I have so far is a PHP-based visitor tracker script, which I essentially wrote for myself. However, since some bloggers at the VolkskrantBlog asked if they could use it as well, i decided to adopt it to more general use. It was a fun and interesting project, and this would be a nice extension to it. And besides a good exercise for the Prefectionist that I am. An exercise in trying to put a work in progress out there, and let other people play with something that is nice, but not prefect. Yet.


Digital fish and chips


Little did I know where that exercise would bring me. The three people that played Beta-tester where incredibly thrilled with TelMiep, which is what the new Visitor Tracker was christened.
- Within a week 15 fellow bloggers had installed TelMiep on their blogs.
- Today, barely a month afyer the first public Beta, TelMiep is rapidly serving one third of the active users and has indexed over 10.000 blog entries.
- This week I was informed that the TelMiep technology would be integrated within the upcoming update to VolksKrantBlog 2.0, and would become the standard tracking technology to be used by the VKB.

What is it that people are so thrilled about?
TellMeep opens up an entirely new dimension to your blog, it seems.
So far, I knew how many people visited a page in the blog somewhere, and I assumed that 90% of those would be for the most recent entry. The older entries where out of sight and slowly being marched down the blog page. Chances are they were somewhere being used to wrap up digital fish and chips with...


It's alive!


Well I was wrong, it turns out. A blog is different from a newspaper in that older entries keep on attracting new readers that are being informed, stimulated or annoyed, depending on the current news. So whenever a certain political issue is being revived again, I immediately see my entries about those subjects coming to life.

Even when no one reacts to my latest posting, it seems I have been able to write a number that keep on attracting interested visitors. I never knew, or realized this, until I saw my TellMeep stats.
It has helped me get a more even perspective on my blog, which also helps me to deal with the 'psychological shock-effect' of a posting that has dropped absolutely dead after two days of hard writing...

A third of the active bloggers at the VKB can't be entirely wrong, I figured, so the last weeks I have been working on rewriting the TelMiep-code for the blogger-engine that drives blogger.com and blogspot.com. I have been my own beta-tester, and I have to say I am very happy with how it turned out.

TellMeep tracks all visits to this blog, and shows me what pages people click on and, if they like what they read, where they click next...


Fun, useful en addictive

Based on the feedback received from a couple of self-professed total digibetes, the installation instructions are clear enough, enabling them to install TellMeep at the first try. W00t!

So, currently those instructions are being translated to the 'blogger-version' and will shortly appear in this blog.
TellMeep.blogspot.com will be the central depository for all things related to TellMeep, with installation instructions, a FAQ, and lots of room for feature requests and feedback.

And yes, I know it is tooting my own horn, but I have to repeat this comment made by fellow-blogger Ernst: “TelMiep is fun, useful en addictive.

Back to translating!

27 comments:

  1. Anonymous3/11/08 17:20

    No word to much about you're excellent 'Telmeep'. Since I installed it, saw I for the first time which blogs were visited. That was an asthonishing expierence.
    peter louter

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  2. Anonymous3/11/08 17:26

    Tellmeep: everything you always wanted to know about.. your blogs.
    Nothing more, nothing less.
    A real 'must have'.
    An eyeopener!!

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  3. Thx Peter and Aad. Seeing how you are two of the most-read and visisted blogs that TellMeep tracks, it's good to hear that even your large blogs pose no problem!

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  4. Anonymous3/11/08 17:43

    Vandaag deze teller op mijn weblog gezet, het ging supersnel en het was heel makkelijk om deze teller te plaatsen en wat andere tellers niet doen, doet deze wel, het geeft ook aan welke pagina( s ) men bezocht. Ik ben heel blij met deze teller!

    Met vriendelijke groet,

    Zilvertje. (het Engels moeten jullie er maar bij denken :^)

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  5. Translation of comment posted by Zilvertje:

    "I installed this tracker on my blog today, it went super fast and TellMeep was very easy to install. This tracker does what other trackers don't, and tells me exactly which pages have been visited. I am very happy with this tracker!

    kind regards,
    Zilvertje"

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  6. It's simple to use and provides lots of information about the pages which are visited. A real Eye opener...

    Tellmeep is it for me!

    Ramirezi

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  7. You already know I'm so happy with Meep! But Nico: Next time, choose 'open in empty window' to make it easier to go back to the VKblog, please...
    kind regards,
    Mo

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  8. Anonymous3/11/08 19:15

    @Telmiep: Great, I'm very satisfied regarding the new counter with all its functionalities. Thanx for all the effort and support.

    Cheers,
    Kokopelli

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  9. Anonymous3/11/08 19:40

    As I mentioned before, it is fun, useful and addictive. Probably in the next future it will expose more unexpected secrets, for instance if the real time of visiting can be reported. Then, it shows the interest of the reader and within it more important: the quality and appreciation of the written article.
    Better then the silly recommendations and responses VKB uses now.
    Kind regards
    Ernst

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  10. @ Mo: You are totally right, sorry about that, cause I usually do make my links open new windows...

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  11. @ ramirezi: Thank as well! And my Cacatuoïdes send their regards to your Rami's :-)

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  12. Anonymous3/11/08 19:45

    TellMeep shows - rather a surprise to me - that today readers are reading blogs which I wrote some two years ago. TellMeep also gives insight in the differences between your own favourits and the visitors' preference. Keep up the good work!
    Greetings, Terracidus

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  13. @ kokopelli: Thnxs dude. Too bad I now have no reason anymore to come down to your blog and verbally absuse you for your tellerlessness. ;-))

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  14. @ ernst: There should be a way to extract and represent that info in a useful way, and I am considering 3 possible ways of visualizing the info. I'll keep you posted!

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  15. Et Tu, Terracidus...
    Thx for your kind words!

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  16. Anonymous3/11/08 20:10

    Hi Nico,
    thanks for all your efforts with TellMeep! :)
    I'm very happy with it, I also love the fact that you can see that even older blogs still attract visitors!
    Bye,
    Marjelle

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  17. Thanks for TellMeep, I find it quite interesting to find out that also some of my old articles (which I am proud of writing about) are still read by people.
    It is easy to install!

    Furthermore, its free! So that's interesting, especially for Dutch people...:-)

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  18. Anonymous3/11/08 20:34

    it's simple, it's working, it's perfect and free!
    the man who made this possible, did a really good job!

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  19. @ helena, marjelle & Lebonton:
    thx evryone for your kind words and remarks! I am much obliged for sure.

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  20. Anonymous3/11/08 22:50

    Thank you so much for your Telmeep! It motivates me to write more about children's mental needs.
    Lisette

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  21. I've watched and read from the very first start about the birth and growing of Telmeep. And it was surprising and nice to follow that. I was from the beginning very enthoustic about Telmeep and I really wanted to have that counter on my blog. So I encouraged Nico to go on, and I also asked him some functions and options I'd like to have. And after mostly some hardworking nights he proudly announced that it was done... Even for me it was easy to install Telmeep on my blog. Thanks to the outstanding exploration of how to do by Nico. He is a natural born teacher, I think...
    I'm very satisfied with Telmeep on my blog. It surprised me to see how many older blogs are still being visited, how many pages a visitor watches for example. And on a busy day when I have many visitors I can see all of them during a long time and not only the last twenty for a short period. And there is more... but see for youself and just install Telmeep, you won't regret it.

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  22. @ Lisette: and thank you as well!

    @Coby: I take your praise very seriously, because you have been one of the instigators of the whole thing...
    Your comments and encouragement helped me get through some of the rougher patches, while also allowing me to check if the whole thing wasn't getting to 'high-tech'. Hopefully TellMeep will be able to keep you happy :-)

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  23. It works.And it works great and is easy to install.

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  24. Anonymous4/11/08 23:03

    It's okay, dear 'Boss', you're running out of 'tellers'... ;-)
    Nice to see what you've made to most of us, but don't ask me about Digger and other telwords, yes, I know Technorati and I'll take a look there. But what to do there, just looking around, give my vote to the Boss and TelMeep and that's it?
    I'll see about it what I can do.
    Wish you very much success, joy and moreover pleasure!

    JHvD

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  25. @ Christina: thank you so much!

    # Johan: One of the very first TelMiepers as well! thank you so very much for the support along the way, the grat ideas, the beautifull image you created for me and for these kind words!

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  26. telmeep rules!

    as a small token of my appreciation
    -and because telmeep is totally recommendable-
    i took the liberty to create a link on my site to the telmeep-installation instructions on your site.

    thanks so much nico

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  27. How very kind of you! Thanks for the effort you took to put the link up and I am very happy that you appreciate TellMeep. Nico

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