» We're entering a new world in which data may be more important than software. Tim O'Reilly

» You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data. Daniel Keys Moran

» Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. Charles Babbage 

StatPress Community Go support site / Go to the forums



Welcome to StatPress Community, the Real Time Statistics for your web.
We appreciate the chance for testin and using this plugin. In case you need it , there will be more help on the WordpressReady site and their forums.

Current Version: V1.6.4 (2012-04-15 21:15 -3GT)
Changes/Improvement introduced:

Changes/Features/Improvement

What is in it for you?
  • Old deprecated functions up-to-date. Around 50 issues corrected. The plugin should work without any warning event setting debug=true
  • No more error warnings even debug mode is set to true
  • Fixed few glitches in the code like undeclared constant or missing values name in arrays.
  • Mor stable code translate in more stable plugin
  • Improved: 
    • Last Search terms provides better understanding from referrer just hovering the original link.
    • Capabilities: now is easy to control which level is capable of using the plugin (Super Admin, Admin, Editor, Author, Contributor, Suscriber)
  • More useful overview providing additional link on hovering and allowing access relevant information.
  • Improved and simplified capability control.
  • At code level:
    • Options settings overrided with new class using Settings API. 
    • Utilities class for common static method shared between classes
    • Improved code in the widgets.
    • Huge internal improvement using best recommended WP standards and easing to perform code modifications.
    • Fixes:
      • bad delimiter in preg_match causes stop filtering  special folders.
    • Improved results in overview.

    Introduction

    For sake of simplification we will use the StatComm abbreviation to refer StatPress Community (the current version).
    1. What is StatPress Community?
    2. How does it works?
    3. StatComm Main Features:
      1. Graphics view: Visual Traffic View
      2. Details
      3. Spy feature: who's there?
      4. Global Search
      5. Export Feature
      6. Control & Filter &Customize Data View: Options
      7. Unknown User Agents
    4. StatComm  Advanced Features
    5. Multilanguaje features. and considerations
    6. Widgets 
    7. Services used by StatComm
    8. FAQ
    9. Credits

    1. What is StatPress Comunity?


    StatComm Activation
    StatComm plugin aims to show the traffic site providing a real time graphics for many different sources, collecting information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers, OS (Operative System) and more.

    2. How does it works?

    StatComm relies on Wordpress capabilities to do its task. Wordpress provide a way to get the information about the traffic, but this information is raw, without distinction of procedence or destination. StatComm is capable of filtering this raw data, extract the relevant information, collect it, and present it in a readable visual format.

    3. StatComm Main Features

    StatComm provides a set of features for visualizing real time traffic, including graphics bar, country flags and many indicators.

    1. Graphics view: Visual Traffic View

      The Visual Traffic View can be accessed  clicking the StatPress main
      StatComm Overview
      In a single view, you will appreciate the current day traffic, categorized by Visitors, PageViews, Spiders and Feeds. Over the graphic bar, you will have a briefing about today's traffic, yesterday's traffic and several calculations and consolidated data.

      Tip: hover the mouse on each graphic bar to see specific values of visitors, pageviews ,spiders and feeds.

      Above the graphics you have several reports on the current traffic:

    Improved last hits overview (since 1.6.3)
             New on StatComm 1.6.3:
           In the bottom of the page there is also some valuable information to be noted: 

    2. Details

    Option Details

    The Details menu provide a different statistical view of the data stored. This view summarizes the information based on all current records to display some trends and categorizes in different areas, as Top 5 days, OS, Browser, Feeds Totals, Search Engines, Top Search Items, Countries, Spiders, etc.

    3. Spy feature: who's there?

    Spy Feature

    The Spy feature is used to try to understand and follow the single activity of particular users, allowing tracking down the pages visited, time, procedence and IP.
    This view will try to group by ip the user activity to give an overview.

    4. Global Search

    Global Search

    The Global Search is allows tracking anything since you started blogging. The search will include all the records currently stored to retrieve results.

    5.  Export Feature

    Exporting data

    The export data allows to save your traffic data to text or CSV files for further analysis . Currently it supports only date ranges and it does not have additional filters.

    6.    Control & Filter &Customize data view: Options

    Customizing Options

    The Options Panel allows to change different settings and even alter the normal plugin behavior to your convenience. Here you will see the most common options:
    • Collect data about logged users: By default, StatComm does not collect traffic generated by logged users. In that case, all activity would be logged (even admin activity). This option is useful when the site has specific purpose (like for example, a community with membership)
    • Do not collect spiders visits: The spiders are automatic programs browsing your site to collect data for indexing. They are not users, but they act like one. Unless exceptional cases, the data collected from the spiders activity tends to be big and useless. This option disable spiders recording and saves an important space in the records table.
    • Automatically delete visits older than...: StatComm captures visitor information until eventually the maximum database capacity or hardware capacity, which ever runs out first. The excesive amount of data would cause a performance loss on the plugin, specially evident when summarizing data to display graphic statistics. Depending on your traffic, it would be wise to clear the data records from time to time. The available options are (Never delete (which is default), 1,3,6 or 12 months). 
    • Automatically delete spiders visits older than: For the reasons above mentioned, the traffic generated by spiders are normally not worth it. It is possible to schedule its deletion to keep the records clean , so the plugin will perform faster. Options are 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or 1 year. It would be clever to activate this option for deleting undesired data stored and keep user information.
    • Days in Overview graph: You can change the amount of columns in the Overview Graphic Bar from here. Options are 7, 10, 20, 30 and 50.
    • Minimum Capability to view stats: Usually the statistics are allowed for admin users, but in case you need to allow view statistics to user with less privileges, you can change this feature to an appropiate level.

    7. Unknown User Agents

    Unknown User Agents

    StatComm attempt to understand the incoming traffic and separate users from spiders. This decision is based on identifiers provided by the browser (who has name, the Agent). When it fails to recognize it, the Agent is listed on this Category. Due the changing nature of Internet and browsers, the Agent string is always growing, requiring that StatComm update its internal Agent dictionary from time to time.

    4. StatComm Advanced Features

    Although StatComm provides a great deal of information, it has many other features which improves its functionality.
    Since StatComm 1.6.3, all information about spiders, user agents (spiders and browsers) and operative systems is handled using a new API  (see FAQ in this document for more information)
    Some of these characteristics will be expanded for easier maintenance. Perhaps one of the most interesting and not-so-known features are their custom definition table (.def tables) and also their user agent data (.ini tables) to store . All those definition tables are stored on the plugin location, under the def folder, and those tables play a key rol on StatComm configuration.
    1. Ban IP feature: the banips.dat file keeps a list of ip to be rejected. When a user try to get your blog through any IP listed on this table definition, it will automatically banned (the site will not render for that user, meaning it will be unable to browse it).
    2. New in StatComm 1.6.3: the plugin uses a new engine to keep track of incoment users/spiders, relying on three different files:
      1. uasdata.ini: it contains all information about browsers, operative systems and spiders.
      2. cache.ini: temporal file used by the engine to retrieve information faster.
      3. searchterm.ini: track search engines and extract searched terms from the referrer.
    3. Files browser.dat,os.dat,searchengines.dat and spider.dat becomes obsolete from StatComm 1.6.3. If you install this plugin manually, you can safely remove it.

    5.    Language features and considerations

    StatComm support currently many languages including English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Norwegian, Dutch, Brazilian (Portugues), Turkish and Swedish. More languages will be supported in the newer versions.

    The language will switch automatically depending on the Wordpress WPLANG value. This can be defined on the wp-config.php Wordpress file.
    Example:

    define('WPLANG', 'es_ES'); //switching Wordpress to Spanish, will automatically set StatComm to Spanish.

    6.    Widgets

    Top Post widget
    Top Posts Widget
    Print widget
    Print widget

    StatComm offers two widgets to show relevant information about your traffic stats.
    The TopPosts widgets shows the most viewed pages on your site, while the StatComm Custom View widget allows you to present the data in multiple ways depending on your choice.

    In version 1.6.2  both widget were updated. The Topposts widget will be also improved in the on the incoming versions.

    7. Services used by StatComm

    Statcomm relies on Internet services to keep it running. In normal circunstances you won't even know that, but is good to know what services are used with StatComm to give them the credit they deserves:

        8.        FAQ

    9.     Credits

    StatComm is a giant rewrite of StatPress, another stats plugin. StatComm will provide on the following versions a truly way to update from many unsupported or outdated StatPress plugins variations. A detailed milestone is under way in the main site. StatComm is currently under development, providing support and appreciating the feedback from its starting community.

    This project is based on the develop of thousands of contributors along the web & time. Without them, this work would be unfeasible.  The StatComm Project will bring to the present those efforts, project it to the future and build the best and most advanced stats plugin conceivable.

    "The best software is not about brilliant coding. It's about careful listening".