How To Add Google Analytics To Your WordPress Blog (Video)

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Google Analytics allows you to collect and see statistics over your blog site traffic. You can see the number of visitors, referral sources, and the keywords that are driving people to your site.

I’m going to show you how to set up Google Analytics on a WordPress site. This video only applies to WordPress.org blogs, not to WordPress.com sites. Click here if you are a WordPress.com user. Otherwise, enjoy the video:

WordPress.com
Because WordPress.com does not support JavaScript, you cannot load Google Analytics. As of now, there is no way around this. If you have a WordPress.com blog and want to capture some statistics then you can use GetClicky. This site allows you to get some site stats but nowhere near the kind of information you can get from Google Analytics.

The other way to get site statistics is to use the built-in stats viewer in WordPress.com’s Dashboard. Here are a couple of views:

The Dashboard view:

Part of the “More Details” WordPress.com view:

So there you have it, installing Google Analytics on a WordPress.org and tips for checking stats on WordPress.com.

Do you have any questions? Leave a comment and don’t forget to squeeze the tube below and subscribe to my YouTube Channel (cinemaluna).

How To Add A Facebook Fan Badge To Your Blog

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Jesse Luna

One of the best ways to tell your blog visitors about your Facebook presence is by using a Facebook Fan Badge. This allows users to click a button and join your Fan page and to click through to your Facebook account.

Quick note, are you looking for information on the Facebook Fan Widget? If so, click here.

To add the Facebook Fan Badge Widget:

1. Go to the Facebook Fan Badge Widget page. You will need to be logged into Facebook to access this page.

2. The “Select a Page” drop down box will show all of the fan pages you have joined. By default, the Fan Badge Preview section on the right will show the first fan page in your fan page list. Select your fan page and the Fan Badge Preview will update.

3. When you select your fan page, the “Copy the code below and paste it on your website” textbox will update with the correct code. Copy the code. Pro-tip: I like to keep a text file open (like Notepad) so I can paste in and label code. I do this in case I totally forget what I just copied and end up copying something else into my clipboard. It saves time and my sanity. ;)

4. Log into your blog, and add a text widget to your blog, paste in the code, and save your changes. This part of the process will be different depending on your blogging system.

For WordPress.com and WordPress.org (custom install) users
1. Log into WordPress.com
2. From your blog’s dashboard, go to the Appearance> Widgets page
3. Assuming you have at least one sidebar, click + drag a Text widget to your sidebar
4. Set a title. I used “Join My Facebook Fan Page” as the title
5. Paste in the code that we copied from the Facebook Fan Badge page. If it is no longer in your clipboard, you can copy it from your temporary text file mentioned in the Pro-tip above.
6. Save then Close and you’re set.

This is a screenshot of adding the badge to WordPress.com (click to enlarge):

Adding the widget to WordPress.com and WordPress installs is fairly easy but to add them to Tumblr and Posterous take more work and you have to muck around in the HTML. I’ll show you exactly how to do that.

For Tumblr users:
1. Log into your Tumblr account
2. Click on the Customize link button (upper right part of the page with the wrench icon)
3. Click on the “Theme” tab at the top of the page. We’re assuming you have Advanced HTML turned ON for your theme.
4. Navigate to the part of the theme where you want the badge to show up. I put mine right below a FormSpring widget which shows up under the Archive/RSS segment.
5. Click on the Update Preview button to see your changes.
6. After adding the exact code the box was slightly our of whack so you may have to tweak the colors a bit. Once you’ve done that, click on the Save & Close button and you’re set.

This is where I added in the Facebook code (click to enlarge):

For Posterous users (requires Advance Theme view to be turned on):
1. Log into your Posterous account
2. Go to the Settings page by mousing over the upper right section of he page and clicking on “Settings” button
3. Click on the big “Theme and Customize My Site” button
4. Click on the Advanced tab in the upper left hand side of the page
5. Once again, you’ll need to have Custom Theming turned on to proceed. If you do, you’ll see HTML template code in the top window. Expand the window by clicking on the “Expand” link
6. Navigate to where you would like to add your badgeand paste it in. I added my badge right below the “Subscribe via RSS” link

This is what the RSS link template code look like. Paste your badge code right after this section (it ended up being 90% down towards the end of the template page on my theme). Click to enlarge:

So we just learned how to add a Facebook Fan Badge to your blog site. If you desprately need help with doing this with one of the other blogging platforms, leave a comment below and I’ll update this blog post with those instructions. M’Kay?

—

Whoa there big feller, how to I display the fan pictures and my Facebook feed like on some other sites?

Facebook has several types of goodies for sites and one of them is a Facebook Fan Widget (not the same thing as the badge). The Fan Widget uses JavaScript code so some blogging systems do not allow them. WordPress.org blogs do allow them since they are installed on one’s own server but WordPress.com does not allow them because of the JavaScript.

Read and Write to your WordPress Blog on Tweetie2 for iPhone

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Jesse Luna

You can now read and post to WordPress.com blogs using Tweetie2, a third-party iPhone Twitter application.

This is cool because it’s like having mobile Twitter but for blogs. You can read and post to your blog and also read other WordPress.com blogs.

This is an overview of how it works, for specific instructions view the WordPress.com blog post on this new feature:

1) Set up a new account in Tweetie2 for your WordPress.com blog. Tweetie2 charges $2.99 for the app. I didn’t have it yet so finally ponied up the cash and it’s rockin so far.

2) Change a setting so that it uses the special link to a Twitter WordPress API. This tells Tweetie2 that you want that Account to do WordPress things, not Twitter things. That means that you will not be able to tweet from that Account, which makes sense since it’s pointing to your blog and not Twitter.

3) Set up your blog using your WordPress.com username and password information. You’ll still be configuring this new Account at this point. Since WordPress.com allows multiple blogs under one account, your default blog will be the one that Tweetie2 can post to. But, you can change that setting by going to your WordPress.com site’s Profile page (see below).

To change the “controlling” WordPress blog that will be updated from the Tweetie2 Account, just select the blog from the “Status updates will be posted on this blog:” drop down menu.

4) Configure geotagging. While you’re in the WordPress.com Profile page, you can also decide if you want to allow geotagging which attaches location information to your blog posts. You must have geotagging turned on for the specific “controlling” WordPress.com blog for this to work. If you want more information on geotagging, I created a video tutorial on how to turn on the geotagging feature on a WordPress.com blog. My tutorial was also picked up by WordPress.tv.

I tested this and posted an update to my geotagging enabled WordPress.com blog. After a while, the post showed up on the Tweetie2 Account but it took a little longer for it to show up with a little red flag next to it. The red flag indicates that if you click on the item you’ll also see a map.

5) Add in your friends! Not only can you read and post to your selected blog, you can also read other WordPress.com blogs. In order for that to happen, these WordPress.com blogs must be added to your “Blog Surfer” list. You can access this area by logging into your WordPress.com blog site then going to My Account > Blog Surfer. If you’ve previously added blogs to this list, they should already show up in your Tweetie2 WordPress Account “stream.” If you want more to show up, just enter the URL in the “WordPress.com url” text box and click on the Add button.

This is a view of the Blog Surfer page:

Once you add your favorite WordPress.com blogs, it takes a few minutes for them to show up in your new Tweetie2 WordPress Account feed. Refresh Tweetie2 if you don’t see them after a few minutes. Items appear in the stream in chronological order so you may have to scroll down to see older posts – yes, just like Twitter.

6) Post away! Now you can post to your blog just as you would compose a tweet for Twitter. You still only have 140 characters, there are no attachments, and no special fields for adding links. You’d have to type or paste in any links you want to include in your post. Once again, if you have geotagging turned on for this blog, that information will show up for that blog post and will show up for any of your friends that subscribe to your blog via the Blog Surfer feature.

You’ve just learned the process for creating a new Tweetie2 Account to give it Twitter-like connectivity to your WordPress.com blog network.

So tell me, will you use it? If so, do you think you’ll post to your WordPress.com blog more?

Can I Get an Email Subscription with that Blog?

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Jesse Luna

WordPress finally added an Email Subscription feature to its WordPress.com blogs. This is a great new feature because it is much easier than adding in a third-party email subscription option like Feedburner.

The email subscription feature comes in the form of a new built-in Widget and this video tutorial shows you how to get it working, step-by-step. Happy blogging!

If you liked this tutorial, subscribe to my YouTube Channel and sign up for MY blog by email. Thanks for tuning in!

[Video Tutorial] How to Turn on Geotagging on WordPress.com

Posted on November 14, 2009 by Jesse Luna

WordPress recently announced geotagging support for WordPress.com blogs. Naturally I had to check it out but had trouble finding out which switch to flip. Luckily I ran into the new Geotagging Support page and I was off and running.

This video shows you how to turn on Geotagging. And no, this is not available for custom WordPress.org blogs yet. Enjoy.

WordPress serves up lightening fast RSS

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Jesse Luna

Today, WordPress deployed a new functionality called RSS Cloud to its 7.5 million blogs on WordPress.com. This allows people to get notification of blog feeds as soon as they are published.

That’s awesome, Dude! Uh, so, er, what is RSS?
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a way for blogs to share their content with others via a feed. Typically, people don’t want to look at the raw formatted content so they will subscribe to this content via an RSS reader, like Google Reader.

Ok, so my blog has had and RSS feed on it forever. What’s changed?
Wordpress.com blogs still have an RSS feed but now it includes information about a “cloud” item. The cloud gets and passes along information about the new blog post as soon as it has been published.

This is the difference between going to the bakery every hour to see if there are fresh bagels and having someone stand at the bakery then calling you when they are fresh out of the oven. The person standing at the bakery is the RSS Cloud in this metaphor.

If you’d like more information on the tech details and implementation of RSS Cloud and the RSS specification you should definitely tune into Dave Winer’s recent blog post (he helped shape the RSS landscape).

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WordPress serves up lightening fast RSS