291 Comments

1. 
   1 Theo Richel on Aug 14, 2006 at 1:46 am (Quote):

   Hi,
   I have installed your Google Analyticator plugin and though it looks quite promising it behaves somewhat strange.
   You say: ‘The Google Analytics code is added to the section of your theme’*, but when I search (with Frontpage 2003) my website it cannot find it.

   Google Analytics *does* report visits, but it gives conflicting messages.
   ‘Check status’ tells me that the tracking code is installed correctly, but the report section says it is still ‘waiting for data’ and also: Tracking has not been validated or added to one or more of your Website Profiles Report data is not being gathered for one or more of your Website Profiles. Please review the Status column in the table below to discover which Website Profiles require action in order to add tracking for gathering report data.

   Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
   TR

2. 
   2 Ronald Heft on Aug 14, 2006 at 1:51 am (Quote):

   Your tracking code is present on your website. The problem lies with Google’s tracking detection system. From what I’ve seen, it’s very slow in updating the status of the code on your site. Hits are being counted now, but it can take a few weeks until all of the data is available in your profile.

3. 
   3 Thorleif Wiik on Aug 25, 2006 at 3:48 pm (Quote):

   Google Analyticator 1.4 seems not to work together with wordpres 2.0.4 and the K2 based theme “3 Column K2 0.9 Release” from http://www.obharath.net/blog/2006/08/16/3-column-k2-09-release.

   Thorleif

4. 
   4 Ronald Heft on Aug 25, 2006 at 9:43 pm (Quote):

   Are there any error messages or is it just not inserting the code in the header of the website?

5. 
   5 Janne on Aug 26, 2006 at 4:45 am (Quote):

   Just wanted to let you know that Analyticator is working erratically with 2.0.4: it can suddenly make the entire blog away. WP just responds to a GET with “200 OK” and no other information. This appears as a “Disconnected from network” with Safari, and an empty page in FireFox.

6. 
   6 Ronald Heft on Aug 26, 2006 at 11:02 am (Quote):

   Do you have a link to a page with these problems?

7. 
   7 Janne.jalkanen@ecyrd.com on Aug 28, 2006 at 1:26 am (Quote):

   Unfortunately, no. It turns out that it’s probably some interaction between 2.0.4, Analyticator and Ultimate Tag Warrior, since removing any of these three in the equation works. (i.e. turning UTW off works, too.)

8. 
   8 Ronald Heft on Aug 28, 2006 at 1:30 am (Quote):

   I’ve had some very weird issues with plugins in WP 2.0.4 also. At one point certain pages could not be seen without disabling a plugin. Didn’t matter what plugin, just one had to be disabled. So, I definitely think there are some bugs in WP 2.0.4. Let’s hope that whatever the heck is causing this can be resolved in the next version.

9. 
   9 Will Murray on Aug 30, 2006 at 7:26 am (Quote):

   I thing I have found a problem/bug in the regexp that detects outbound/download links. I am using WordPress 2.0.4 (which I see might or might not be part of the problem). I am using Viper’s Video Quicktags 3.0.0 plugin and embedded a WMF file in a post. It worked fine before installing GA 1.4 (except one minor typo which I fixed and will be fixed in the next release). In short, VVQ seems to do a great job embedding videos in my blog.

   After adding GA 1.4, the videos stopped working, and I ended up with XHTML validation failures. The reason is that Google tracking codes were inserted in both the data= attribute of the object tag, and also in the value= attribute of the parm src= tag.

   Looking at the source code for GA, the regexp’s generally appear to be pretty precise, and the only regexp I see (and I’m no expert) that might be greedy enough to be grabbing the data= and src= attributes (instead of href=) is in the ga_find_domain function on line 301:
   $host_pattern = “/^(http:\/\/)?([^\/]+)/i”;

   Since the data= and src= attributes both include the string “http://”, that’s the only one I see that might be doing it.

   Of course, I could be giving you a red herring here. I’m not very familiar with either GA’s code or VVQ’s code. I’ve only spent about 1.5 hours tracking this down, and, again, my regexp skills are rather weak. (I can usually decipher them, but have a dickens of a time creating them).

   I am going to disable outbound tracking for now, but if you would like me to turn it back on for you for testing, I’ll be happy to do so.

   Other than this bug, your plugin is working fine for me. Very nifty tool Thanks!

10. 
    10 Will Murray on Aug 30, 2006 at 8:03 am (Quote):

    Ok. Good news for your plugin… the problem was actually with another plugin. GA just inserted its code (properly) into the mangled links that the other plugin created. Sorry for the false alarm. It’s just with the Google tracking codes showing up, and the fact that I didn’t notice the problem until shortly after activating GA, I assumed…

    Anyway, the problem was actually with Auto-hyperlink URLs 2.01. Sorry for the confusion.

11. 
    11 Ronald Heft on Aug 30, 2006 at 8:19 am (Quote):

    Glad to hear that you got it working Murray.

12. 
    12 Will Smith on Sep 19, 2006 at 3:10 pm (Quote):

    Any reason that the plugin dumps the code into the area, while Google recommends you place it right before the tag? Will it work in the header?

13. 
    13 Ronald Heft on Sep 19, 2006 at 3:14 pm (Quote):

    The problem is with WordPress’ template system. Plugin authors can only insert code into the head section of the theme. Some themes support inserting code in the footer, but it’s not widely adopted enough to rely on it as the main method.

14. 
    14 Taner on Oct 14, 2006 at 5:14 am (Quote):

    Thanks..

15. 
    15 Andy Zilch on Oct 17, 2006 at 10:49 pm (Quote):

    Is there any way to put the tracking code lower in the site? That is, place the code near the end body tag instead of in the header?

    It does make a difference in the hit count because with the code in the header, hits get counted even if the page doesn’t fully load (ie I click to the site by accident and the immediately click “back”)?

16. 
    16 Andy Zilch on Oct 17, 2006 at 10:51 pm (Quote):

    Andy Zilch: Is there any way to put the tracking code lower in the site? That is, place the code near the end body tag instead of in the header?

    It does make a difference in the hit count because with the code in the header, hits get counted even if the page doesn’t fully load (ie I click to the site by accident and the immediately click “back”)?

    Whoops, hadn’t read fully the

    Ronald Heft: The problem is with WordPress’ template system. Plugin authors can only insert code into the head section of the theme. Some themes support inserting code in the footer, but it’s not widely adopted enough to rely on it as the main method.

    That stinks… wish it let you put code down in the footer… well i guess I’ll have to hardcode the analytics script into my theme.

17. 
    17 Ronald Heft on Oct 18, 2006 at 1:22 am (Quote):

    When I get a chance I plan to add it as an option.

18. 
    18 Paolo on Oct 25, 2006 at 12:15 pm (Quote):

    I don’t know who came up with that story, but it’s not true (at least on wordpress version 2+)

    On line 233:234 change

    
// Add the script
add_action('wp_head', 'add_google_analytics')


    into

    
// Add the script
add_action('wp_footer', 'add_google_analytics')


    It also speed up page load a lot!
    Have fun!

19. 
    19 Ronald Heft on Oct 25, 2006 at 12:23 pm (Quote):

    Paolo, this weekend (maybe before) I’ll provide an option to place the code in the footer.

20. 
    20 Paolo on Oct 25, 2006 at 12:37 pm (Quote):

    That’s great thanks for your work!

21. 
    21 Ronald Heft on Oct 25, 2006 at 1:38 pm (Quote):

    I just put out a new version with the footer option. Enjoy!

22. 
    22 qyasi on Oct 28, 2006 at 5:51 am (Quote):

    Nice work ! Thanks.

23. 
    23 brad montgomery on Nov 5, 2006 at 12:43 pm (Quote):

    Hi. Thanks for this plug in… very cool.

    But I’m having trouble installing. When I go to the “options” page, nothing happens when I clck on the “update options” button. It just sits there, w/o updating anyting.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks.

    Brad

24. 
    24 Ronald Heft on Nov 5, 2006 at 12:46 pm (Quote):

    Can you update other plugins’ settings without problems?

25. 
    25 brad montgomery on Nov 5, 2006 at 2:25 pm (Quote):

    Hi Ronald. Yeah, the site has plenty of plug ins. It is so weird. you just click the button and nothing happens.

    Weird, huh?

    If you can help you’ll be my hero!

26. 
    26 brad montgomery on Nov 5, 2006 at 2:26 pm (Quote):

    Ronald…. maybe I should have told you.

    I’m using a MAC with the latest version of Firefox.

27. 
    27 David on Nov 6, 2006 at 8:17 am (Quote):

    Hi, thanks for the plugin. It works fine, except that the javascript code is not inserted into outgoing links.

    Any idea why? Or is anyone else having the same problem?

28. 
    28 vijay on Nov 22, 2006 at 4:47 am (Quote):

    Just installed Analyticator. But the analytics post-login screen says code not detected. Does it take long to reflect?

29. 
    29 wwsuccess on Nov 27, 2006 at 12:49 pm (Quote):

    I installed and enabled Google analyticator on my blog ww-success.com, but everytime I check the status Google Analytics says: The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website’s home page. What I am doing wrong? How do I fix this ?

    Thanks,

30. 
    30 Ronald Heft on Nov 27, 2006 at 3:28 pm (Quote):

    Unfortunately there is nothing you can do but wait. Google’s servers are slow at responding to the tracking code being installed. The good news is the hits are being logged, they just won’t be visible until Google picks up on your tracking code.

31. 
    31 Jason Dufair on Nov 30, 2006 at 2:59 pm (Quote):

    Thanks for the great plugin. I was looking for a simple way to track referers and this is perfect.

32. 
    32 wwsuccess on Dec 3, 2006 at 3:54 pm (Quote):

    Ronald,

    Thanks for your reply. Google analytics now recognizes the code, but it’s been about a week and it still shows no traffic, even though I have plenty of traffic. Is this normal? Does it take more than a week for it to start showing traffic? Thank you.

33. 
    33 Ronald Heft on Dec 3, 2006 at 10:11 pm (Quote):

    Yes, it can take sometime. Give it a few more days and see what happens then.

34. 
    34 Pedro Sette Câmara on Dec 7, 2006 at 8:49 am (Quote):

    I took off manually the Google Analytics code, installed Analyticator and decided to let it do the job. But then my RSS feeds stopped working because of the script code. Even after I uninstalled and deleted Analyticator and ripped manually every trace of Google Analytics from my template the GA script lines still remain there, at the top of everything, without any indication on the template that they should be there.

35. 
    35 NumberOne on Dec 14, 2006 at 8:04 am (Quote):

    OK I KNOW WHY IT WASNT’T WORKING!!! NOT BECOUSE THE SCRIPT BUT BECOUSE YOU MUST SPECIFY ON GOOGLE ANALITYCS THAT THE INDEX PAGE IS INDEX.PHP
    FOR EXAMPLE ON MY SITE : URL : HTTP://GOSCRIPT.INFO
    FIRST PAGE: INDEX.PHP
    NOW SHOULD WORK JUST FINE !!!

36. 
    36 Knox on Dec 22, 2006 at 4:00 am (Quote):

    hey what does this plugin actually do?
    can anyone please explain?

37. 
    37 hashbat on Dec 28, 2006 at 7:41 am (Quote):

    Marvelous. Thanks, will spread this among my friends!

38. 
    38 Jerry on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:52 pm (Quote):

    Outbound link tracking seems to be implicitly disabled if the “Footer tracking code” option is enabled (no outbound links have onclick handlers). Perhaps this is intended functionality because the Google JavaScript that defines “urchinTracker()” isn’t included until the end? If so, it would be good to at least mention this next to the “Footer tracking code” option in the settings. But it would also be cool to include Javascript that dynamically adds the onclick handlers once the page has loaded.

    Thanks!

39. 
    39 Ronald Heft on Jan 3, 2007 at 6:54 pm (Quote):

    No, that’s not the intended function. Investigating it now.

40. 
    40 Ronald Heft on Jan 3, 2007 at 7:13 pm (Quote):

    Problem identified and fixed. Download the new version and outbound link tracking should work.

41. 
    41 Ronald Heft on Jan 3, 2007 at 7:15 pm (Quote):

    BTW, the outbound link tracking may have a javascript solution soon. I need to do some testing on it, but it shouldn’t be to far off.

42. 
    42 Jerry on Jan 4, 2007 at 6:47 pm (Quote):

    Excellent, thank you!

43. 
    43 Drew on Jan 5, 2007 at 1:18 pm (Quote):

    I just installed the latest version of the plugin and it doesn’t seem to be putting the js code in my theme. I have activated the plugin, and enabled it in the options with my UID. I looked at your FAQ section and even without being logged in as admin or turning on admin logging doesn’t show the code in my header. Google tells me it’s not installed also. Any ideas? Your help is greatly appreciated.

44. 
    44 Ronald Heft on Jan 5, 2007 at 1:56 pm (Quote):

    Look in your theme’s header.php file and see if you can find a <?php wp_head(); ?> tag. If you can’t, add it somewhere before the </head> tag.

    You can also try changing the location to the footer in Google Analyticator preferences. Your theme might have the <?php wp_footer(); ?> tag, but not the <?php wp_head(); ?> tag.

    Good luck!

45. 
    45 Ronald Heft on Jan 5, 2007 at 3:27 pm (Quote):

    Jerry, download the new version. I now use Javascript instead of rewriting the URLs for outbound link tracking.

46. 
    46 Jerry on Jan 7, 2007 at 2:32 am (Quote):

    Woah, that was fast! Thanks for the great work, I look forward to trying it out.

47. 
    47 Drew on Jan 8, 2007 at 10:17 am (Quote):

    Ronald, I got the code showing up on my page but it’s been over 72 hours and there’s still no data in google analytics…it’s set up in the header section of my page. Google analytics still says it’s installed successfully and data is being gathered but after over 3 days it seems like something is not right.

48. 
    48 Ronald Heft on Jan 8, 2007 at 12:10 pm (Quote):

    Drew, I hate to say this, but just give it more time. Google is SLOW. It takes forever until you finally get your data. Just give it another couple of days and see if it Google starts showing you your data.

49. 
    49 jack on Jan 8, 2007 at 7:26 pm (Quote):

    Nice site actually. Gone to my favourites. Thanks for creation.

50. 
    50 Antoine on Jan 10, 2007 at 8:23 am (Quote):

    Found a bug in your new JS release: when I extract the .zip file under wp-content/plugins/, it creates a directory called google_analyticator.
    However, in google-analyticator.php, you load the javascript file from a directory called google-analyticator (note the hyphen instead of the underscore)…
    As a result, tracking would not work when I enabled the outbound link tracking option.

51. 
    51 Ronald Heft on Jan 10, 2007 at 11:37 am (Quote):

    I reuploaded the ZIP. Thanks for pointing that out.

52. 
    52 Little Money on Jan 12, 2007 at 2:09 am (Quote):

    Thanks for this plugin! Its a really nifty tool to have. I’m sure my readers will be pleased.

    Cheers
    -John

53. 
    53 Ryan on Jan 22, 2007 at 1:03 pm (Quote):

    @Ronald, The bug that Antoine pointed out still appears to exist. My preference would be to leave the php alone and have the zip extract a directory with a hyphen instead of an underscore (e.g. google-analyticator), but it’s your call.

54. 
    54 Ronald Heft on Jan 22, 2007 at 10:13 pm (Quote):

    Ryan, ZIP is updated once again. This time I renamed the directory. I also updated the plugin file to undo my first stupid fix.

    I somehow managed to change the comment address and not the javascript address. It was really dumb to have the problem in the first place, but my fix was even stupider. You guys need to jump on my stupidity faster. Thanks for making me aware.

55. 
    55 Ryan on Jan 23, 2007 at 3:19 pm (Quote):

    @Ronald. Thanks, but the extracted directory name is now mispelled. “google-anaylticator” when it should be “google-analyticator”

    That’s a hard word to spell regardless, maybe you should change the name of the plugin? jk

56. 
    56 Ronald Heft on Jan 23, 2007 at 4:01 pm (Quote):

    Corrected once again. What I can’t get is I swear I double checked everything several times to make sure there would be no stupid issues. I guess after looking over it so many times, I have become blind to my misspelling. Maybe I should just get rid of the whole directory. There were no problems before.

    If there are any more problem, one of you needs to come to my house and give me a good beating. This is just not acceptable. I’m extremely sorry once again.

57. 
    57 Henre on Jan 24, 2007 at 8:48 am (Quote):

    Hi Cavemonkey50.

    I have downloaded and installed Ultimate Google Analytics which seems very similar to your plugin and miraculously got it to work first time. Thing is though, you can specify outgoing links and downloads and it prompts you to add code to the prefix /outgoing/. The laughing matter is I have no idea what this code will look like. say for instance I have a link to another website eg. http://www.mynewpage.co.za, what will the code look like that I put in there?

    And what if I have multiple links to track? OR, should I put the code in the php file directly and not through the admin area.

    Or do you just recommend using your plugin with the promise that it’s easier to operate for non programmers?

58. 
    58 Ronald Heft on Jan 24, 2007 at 2:41 pm (Quote):

    I’ve played with UGA before, and let me tell you, it’s a lot easier with Google Analyticator. I know I may be biased, but it’s what I feel. In GA, it’s just a matter of a check box and everything is up and running. In fact, that option is checked by default, so the only thing you have to worry about is the basic options. From what it sounds, you’re probably be better with GA.

    However, if you want to continue to use UGA, I can help you. I don’t think you need to go anything special with your PHP code. You just have to make sure all the filter check boxes are checked and check track outgoing links and downloads. Then in your downloads box, just enter the extensions you want to track separated by commas. That should do it. If it doesn’t then I’m not familiar with what has to be done in addition.

59. 
    59 bee on Feb 3, 2007 at 2:30 am (Quote):

    i loaded it, inserted the UID, it seemed to be fine, but the code won’t show in the header. i tried using the ‘footer’ setting, but it won’t show in the footer either. i went to the header.php file, and can’t see any of the code there. what is the code supposed to look like? and what should i do next?

60. 
    60 Ronald Heft on Feb 3, 2007 at 11:34 am (Quote):

    What theme are you using? In your header.php file you should find a line of code that says <?php wp_head(); ?>. If you don’t try adding it.

61. 
    61 andrabr on Feb 7, 2007 at 6:19 am (Quote):

    A reason for version 1.6?

    Your (otherwise wonderful) plugin does not support https.

    Why would anyone want to run Wordpress over https? - Various reasons: security, running a shop, paranoid insistence that the readers know who you are, whatever.

    In earlier versions one could simply change one line of code to say:

    (This is exactly what I did two minutes before discovering that version 1.5 is out).

    Now with an extra script it gets trickier…

    A user-friendly support for Google Analytics over https would be sweet, provided you have nothing better to do whatsoever

    Personally, I have found a partial work-around, although far from the quality of your solution.

    Either way, many many thanks!

62. 
    62 Ronald Heft on Feb 16, 2007 at 1:48 pm (Quote):

    Could you use the contact form and elaborate more on the HTTPS issue. I’d love to get Google Analyticator working over HTTPS but I unfortunately don’t have a testing environment. If you can explain what the issue is I should be able to help.

63. 
    63 Robert Richard on Feb 17, 2007 at 7:30 am (Quote):

    Hello,

    Since my migration from WordPress 2.0.7 to 2.1, my google analyticator is not working. In addition, I have the same issue with a 2nd domaine http://www.patrimoineacadien.com . The plugin versions are up to date for both domains and are active. I have change nothing to my Google.com account in regards to the analyticator service. The UID are still valid and all settings are configured correctly.

64. 
    64 Ronald Heft on Feb 18, 2007 at 2:58 pm (Quote):

    Robert, in what way is it not working? I looked at both of your URLs and I do see the tracking code inserted on your site. Is Google Analytics not reporting any stats or are you not seeing the tracking code?

65. 
    65 ojas on Feb 18, 2007 at 3:27 pm (Quote):

    Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /mnt/w0603/d11/s01/b027ea37/www/wp-admin/admin-header.php:16) in /mnt/w0603/d11/s01/b027ea37/www/wp-includes/functions.php on line 1219

    i dont know what that means, please help

66. 
    66 Ronald Heft on Feb 18, 2007 at 3:29 pm (Quote):

    What other plugins do you have installed?

67. 
    67 ojas on Feb 18, 2007 at 3:51 pm (Quote):

    Ronald Heft: What other plugins do you have installed?

    i just have this contact form 2 plugin..nothing else

68. 
    68 Robert Richard on Feb 18, 2007 at 9:46 pm (Quote):

    Google.com settings haven’t changed, only the migration to WordPress 2.1 and possibly a new template, theme Cutline. Google not reporting any stats zero.

    Robert.

69. 
    69 Ronald Heft on Feb 18, 2007 at 11:42 pm (Quote):

    Robert, I recommend you report this to Google Analytics. Looking over your site again, I have determined your tracking code is visible correctly. It’s something on Google’s end. I know this has happened from time to time, and letting them know about it usually corrects it. If your talks with Google are unsuccessful, let me know and I’ll investigate more.

    ojas, open up the google-analyticator.php file and make sure there is nothing before the first <?php and nothing after the closing ?>. That includes spaces, line breaks, etc. Nothing should be there. Do the same for your other plugin.

    If that fails to resolve it, try disabling the other plugin and activating Google Analyticator. Let me know how that goes.

70. 
    70 Can Erten on Feb 20, 2007 at 9:26 pm (Quote):

    The necessary plugin (:
    Thank u so much!

71. 
    71 Robert Richard on Feb 21, 2007 at 9:55 am (Quote):

    Google Analyticator replies by advising does not support independent codes such as http://cavemonkey50.com/code/google-analyticator .

    Robert Richard.

72. 
    72 Ronald Heft on Feb 21, 2007 at 10:28 am (Quote):

    I sent you an email.

73. 
    73 Smaran on Feb 21, 2007 at 3:04 pm (Quote):

    Hey Ron, I just installed the plug-in at my blog. Thanks a lot for distributing this freely, much easier than entering the Analytics code manually.

    Cheers.

74. 
    74 brie on Feb 22, 2007 at 12:34 am (Quote):

    Hey,

    I’m interested in doing the footer option for the script, but am not quite sure how to check if it’s rendering properly. I’ve run searches in the source for both my uacct and just “google,” but nothing come up in either search.

    What (and possibly where, if I’m in the wrong spot) should I be looking for?

    Thanks!

75. 
    75 Ronald Heft on Feb 22, 2007 at 1:02 am (Quote):

    If this is the blog you’re running it on it appears the footer option will not work for you.

76. 
    76 Anders Vesterberg on Mar 14, 2007 at 10:46 am (Quote):

    Hi
    I am using your plugin. If I have activated akismet, will the spam that akismet removes be included in Google stats?
    Thanks
    Anders

77. 
    77 Ronald Heft on Mar 14, 2007 at 11:47 am (Quote):

    An occasional spammer might be counted, but most of them will not due to not being Javascript aware.

78. 
    78 Louis on Mar 19, 2007 at 4:20 pm (Quote):

    Tried to install Google Analyticator, and when I try to update the whole thing here is what i see:

    Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output start