Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Help, I Need Your Help

I want to do some jazzy things with my blog like put subscription buttons on it and keep track of some stats of who visits and and like. I need advice on what the options are and where to find information. Can you help me?

I've been playing a giant game of cat and mouse trying to find what I want. Now I give up and seek help from my trusty blogland possie.

13 comments:

Taccolina said...

For the stats side of things, I've got StatCounter, which is a free and invisible counter (I hate those little number boxes; it looks so daggy) - so mine's not visible but it's there. (woo) It tells me how many individual sessions, how many return visitors and other aggregated information, and some decent reports. http://my8.statcounter.com/

Taccolina said...

For Subscription links: Click on "Layout" under your blog name in the Blogger dashboard, then click on "Add a Gadget" - a list pops up, and the subscription links are about the fourth one down. Just click the plus sign and off you trot...

CurlyPops said...

I usually find the links on other blogs...most widgets have a little thing underneath where it says 'add this widget to your blog'. If you click on it, you're taken to a website where you can copy and paste the details for your own blog.
Another good stat counter is Google Analytics:
http://www.google.com/analytics/
It will tell you what google searches gave you hits on your blog and all your visitors etc too

Gillian R said...

I vote for statcounter too. It's free. It's quick. It's easy to understand. Google statcounter and it'll come up.

Liesl said...

I like Google Analytics too. Its great for counting hits and working out page views. There's a little bit of setting up to start with but after that its all plain sailing. There nice little maps and charts plotting out all your info.

http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html

I'm also a bit of a fan of Feedjit which shows you where your traffic is coming from (location) and also the refering site. Its in realtime though, so (as far as I know) you can't check out historical information.

http://feedjit.com/

For some info on how to do subscriptions check out Michelle's fantastic post at Leni & Rose:

http://leniandrose.blogspot.com/2008/08/tips-and-tricks.html

Erin said...

two great places for sprucing up a blog:
this old stand-by http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/
and this one, which i love http://www.bloggerbuster.com/

I use google analytics as well, and really like it. it's free, and invisible. it's also got a map, tells you where people are coming from, what % come back once they have visited the first time, the length of time they stay on the site etc. etc. i love it.

The Essess said...

No advice from me because I dont know! He HE! But I like the photo of the Cat and Mouse, I am easily amused...

edward and lilly said...

I use the subscribe widget on blogger and also a subscribe via bloglines one.

I find google analytics is good to see how many hits I'm getting and where they're coming from, just go to google and then click on business solutions.

And I use feedjit to display in my sidebar where readers are from.

Hope this helps, I'll be interested to see what you come up with :)

Michelle said...

I use Sitemeter which is also free and has some good reports. For subscription buttons, you can add a gadget from your layout page or add a google and bloglines subscribe button individually - here's my post about both of them. Good luck and email me if you need some help. Happy to!

Anastasia said...

i use statcounter - its invisble on your blog
free and easy to add!

Melanie Gray Augustin said...

Sorry for the late comment, but I also use Google Analytics and really like it. I still have to do a subscribe thing on my blog though, so I'm stalking your comments for advice :)

Bellgirl said...

I have statcounter and google analytics, as above. They're both invisible. I actually only bother to read the Google one. I have the feedjit thingy too, also mentioned in the other comments here- I've got of their two gadgets on my blog- one tells me where people have been visiting from in the last day or so, another plots the visitors on a map. That one's quite cool. Take a look, and if you need help to get it going, let me know!

Danielle said...

I use Sitemeter. It's free. Take a look at the small link at the very bottom of my blog.