Eli the Computer Guy

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Now that my new WordPress site is up and running I have been trying to find a way to track new user registration.  I want to be able to back track new registrations to the sources that they come from.  I setup Goals in Google Analytics, but it was still not tracking new user registrations.

The reason apparently is that the login page does not load the Analytics code the way other pages and posts on the site do.  You have to go in and edit the login page and paste the Google code in manually.

To do this find wp-login.php.  You then paste:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'
type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

Before EVERY </BODY> tag on the page. (Make sure to change “UA-XXXXXXX-X” to your account number)

Now Google Analytics will track the login pages, and you can create goals based on new registrations and such.

I originally found this solution at http://www.tdcreative.net/blog/how-to-track-wordpress-signups-and-comments-with-google-analytics/

One issue I run into as a business owner is that I can lose track of the different actions that I do for my advertising schemes.  I’ll put out a call to action to ask for good reviews, or become fans of my Facebook page and after a week or two I forget exactly when I did this.  This becomes a problem when I get a sudden rush of visitors to my site, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly brought the increase on.  I have turned to WordPress.com to help me out.

I have created a PRIVATE blog on WordPress.com.  This means that search engines don’t look at it, and you have to log into the site to view the content.  I then type in little notes on what I do, and then add those notes to specific categories.  Now in the future I will be able to look back on what I did, and exactly when I did it.  So if I’m thinking about sending out a new Email Blast, but I’m worried I’ll annoy my clients I can just take a look and see how long it’s been since the last one.

This is incredibly easy to setup and use.  It’s one of those ridiculously simple tools that can bring huge results.

Check it out at http://www.WordPress.com

Side Note:

You can also use it for things like dieting, sleep journals, etc…

For bloggers and other creators of content for web sites we run into a strange societal issue when it comes to promoting our sites.  As business people we need to promote our site as much as possible, but in our society “self promotion” is looked down upon as a trait of arrogance.  You get caught between a bit of a rock and a hard place because you don’t want to seem to self important, but if you just sit around quietly waiting for your web site to “take off” you’ll be having a very long and disappointing wait.

If you want to be successful and have visitors to your site you need to suck it up and ask your visitors to help promote your site.  Social networking communities like StumbleUpon and Digg can drive tremendous traffic to your site.  Many of those visitors may not be interested in your content, but a surprising percentage will be glad to have found you.  Those people will share your site with others and through this process you can create a successful site for nothing in advertising expense.

You can see on this blog I come out and ask for help.  Some people may think I’m a “jack ass” but many will share the love and help spread the word about my site.  For the cost of a few minutes of time to cut and paste some code into the blog I can gain hundreds and some days thousands of extra visitors to my site.

I know it may go against the grain and feel uncomfortable for you to do, but if you ask your visitors to recommend your site in Social Networking Communities many will be more then happy to lend a hand.

If you’re blog is like mine you cover a lot of topics, but only one or two are the ones that you REALLY want people to pay attention to.  Recently I have begun creating Video Classes and posting them to my WordPress blog, the problem is under the normal category structure they get lost in the shuffle.  When I create 1 video per week, but 10-20 regular posts you can see that it’s easy for my blog visitors to overlook the videos.  I have found a great little plugin to help me with this.

The Category-Posts plugin is about as simple as it gets for plugins.  Once you activate it it allows you to have a sidebar widget that will only show posts from a single category.  You give the widget a title, and tell it how many posts to show and it creates a little sidebar box for you.

So now when you go to my site there is a box that says “Video Classes” and only shows posts from the Video Class category.  Underneath there is another category widget that then shows all the categories on the web site.

You can use multiple instances of the Category-Posts widget so you could have a number of sidebar boxes for different topics of importance.

This is a great little plugin that works well.  Take a look at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/category-posts/

WP-o-Matic is a great little free WordPress plug-in you can use to turn RSS feeds into blog posts.  You don’t have as many options as you do in Autoblogged, but it seems lightning quick.

It is very light on resources and is easy to setup and use. If you are looking for a free way to turn RSS feeds into blog posts you should definitely take a look at this plug-in.

You can find it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-o-matic/