Wordpress stuff, a statistics plugin, and jello

I have yet to track down the source of the problem. It’s hard to fix a problem that you can’t a) reproduce and b) even if you could, since the process is run deep behind the scenes you can’t step through it.

So other than some changes I made to the bar graph, I’m putting a complete freeze on adding new features to kStats until I’ve got this one nailed down. I’m going to go through each and every file and line of code one by one, and see where I can make improvements, fixes, or just finish commenting if nothing else.

Tracking down the beast

At the same time, since the only feasible source of the problem I can see is the nightly cleanup routines (as nothing else interacts directly with the totals table), I’ve taken a few steps. I’m now running a logger on it, so every time it trips I have a neat little text file that spits out every query, object and variable that’s part of the routine. I’m also running the wp-cron hook on an hourly basis, instead of nightly like regular users, so that it runs in a day what would normally take almost a month.

So far I haven’t seen the data get truncated again, so it may have been as simple as adding the call to ignore_user_abort().

In the meantime

There may be a few rapid fire bugfix releases of the 0.6.x series in the next few days.

Due to the feature freeze, they will not include any database changes or major updates that require you to run the upgrade utility. Each one should drop into place and self-update without any headache caused on your part.

The new kStats widget!

I’m feeling a lot better, which means kStats is going to be getting a lot of attention over the next little while.

As per a recent feature request, kStats now comes with widget capabilities.

Other updates are noted in the changelog, and include some odds and ends bug fixes as well as complete integration of the user-agent-string.info API for fast and accurate identification of crawlers, as well as visitors operating systems and browsers.

The search engine query string definition file has also been updated and changed to an INI format in preparation for making future updates of this file available for direct download from your administrative interface.

Blog Statistics Widget

The current widget implementation is fairly straight forward in nature and completely user customizable using built in macro codes to display the desired information.

I decided to go with this format in order to allow end users complete control over how the widget is displayed, and what information is displayed. Other than being wrapped in a single DIV element with the class ‘kstats_widget’, all formatting is left in your control.

Available data includes numerical data such as your all time total visitors, pageviews, spiders or feed accesses. You can also access this data by today, yesterday, or this month. In addition, five other macros were added, including information about your current visitor (ip, host, os, browser), and how many visitors are currently viewing your site.

More Feature Requests

I’ve got lots of ideas and future plans for kStats, but what’s really going to make it the statistics plugin of choice for Wordpress users is your input.

I hope this serves to demonstrate that I am listening, and if you have a good idea for kStats, I would be more than happy to implement it. Other such suggestions that have been implemented include the ability to define your own ignore list via the options page, as well as the ability to display more than just the most recent 20 hits.

Let me know what you want to see!

On the road to releasing version 1.x.x of kStats Reloaded for Wordpress, I would like to hear back from the community on what features they like and don’t like in a statistics analysis plugin.

a friendly spider...

Pageviews, spiders, search terms, mumble, mumble…

We’ve all used them, they’re great for a multitude of purposes on a variety of levels. Some people just like to know that they’re getting hits, and how many. Some people are trying to make a living from their online endeavours, such as blogging, and need to know who is viewing their content, where they came from, and how they’re getting around your site, in order to provide this information to potential advertisers or investors.

Some are extremely fast, but may not offer the variety of information that’s being sought out. Some record literally every last detail they can squeeze out, but may store this information in a format that slows your site down to a crawl when combined with other plugins or dynamic content.

Give me your feedback!

What information do you find the most useful? What features just get in your way? Post your comments below, and I’ll review every one for possible inclusion into a future release of kStats.

(kStats Reloaded can be found here.)

If you happen to run a large Wordpress powered site, you might be interested to know that there’s a little known gem of core functionality for placing your site into maintenance mode. This allows you to make upgrades, perform database operations, or do any number of potentially disruptive tasks without affecting any of your bloggers.
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