Today, the folks over at Performancing.com announced the realease of Performancing Metrics, a free new service for tracking statistics for Blogs. Best of all, it's all in Drupal. OK, I'll come clean, I was involved in this project. My primary role was integrating Performancing's existing website with the Metrics tool. The entire toolset runs behind a single Drupal module that acts as a wrapper for what are essentially standalone PHP scripts.
Disclosure out of the way, I've also been using this tool for some of my own websites for the last month or so. When Google Analytics launched, I was able to get an account before they blocked new subscribers due to load issues. I've been monitoring my sites with Google Analytics for about four months. It seems to be a very powerful tool, but to be honest, I don't understand how to use it. There are just too many views and parameters and summaries. Using it, I feel like I did when I first used Vim or MS Word or Paint Shop Pro, overwhelmed and confused. Hey, I just want to write a letter to Mom, and I'm staring what looks like the cockpit of a 747. Similarly, when I look at website stats, I just want to see how many folks are visiting, where they come from, how long they stay, what they like, whether they bothered to leave comments, etc... I don't need a pivot table detailing gross ROI per visitor vectored over a decreasing granular matrix margin. Eeeek! Just show me the big pic and let me get on with my day.
If you're like me, you'll appreciate this new tool. It's light on eye-candy and heavy on simplicity and quick access to what you want to know. It's also somewhat addictive.
To use it, you'll need to sign up over at Performancing.com. Then all you have to do is paste a bit of javascript into your Blogs pages (via templates or footer configuration).
What distinguishes this tool from others is that it's focused on Blogs. The javascript you use will vary depending on which blogging software you're using. This way the javascript is able to glean information from your site that other trackers simply can't. Author names, Comments, Posts, etc...
We're working on making this embedded javascript tracking more effective and specific to the various blog systems, but even this beta version of Performancing Metrics is worth the effort of signing up.
You'll also find lots of cool articles regarding professional blogging. Even if this isn't how you make your living, there is some excellent information that non-professionals can use. Stuff like how to bring more people to your site and how to "monetize" your website more effectively.
Check it out.