Category Archives: Technology

Feb 8 2010

Technology Tip: Blog Analytics Tools

Get_Clicky_ItoolThis weekend I attended Blissdom, a blogging conference that takes place in Nashville each year. While there I had a chance to get together with some of my favorite blogging buddies and swap tips and tricks. During one of the conversations we turned to web analytics.  While many of my blogging cohorts use Google Analytics, StatCounter or Sitemeter, most of the people I spoke with hadn’t heard of my FAVORITE analytics tool, Clicky.

This of course made me think, “I should write about this,” and voila, here I am!

1) What are you talking about?: Web analytics tools allow you to see things like how many people have visited your blog, what posts your readers like the most, where your visitors are coming from and much much more.

2) Do I have to pay for these tools?: You could, but I haven’t seen the need to yet. Most of these tools provide basic services for free.

3)I’m interested. Tell me about these tools: There are several sites that offer web analytics programs for bloggers.  Like I mentioned above, the most popular (IMHO) are Google Analytics, StatCounter, SiteMeter and the fourth should be Clicky. While they all have their strengths (and I use several of them), Clicky is my personal favorite.

About Clicky: Clicky provides you with easy to understand, real time web analytics information, allowing you to view your stats, as they are happening.

Why do I like Clicky:  Easy. There are several reasons:

1) Real time info. I don’t have to wait 24 hours to see what’s happening on my site. I can see it as it’s happening.

2) User friendly. Clicky is very easy to use. No need to try and decode any tech language.

3) Visitor details. I can click on a visitor and view their activity on  my site. As a matter of fact, this part is pretty impressive. You can see how much time they spent, all the links they clicked, how they left, their IP address and more.

4) Twitter Analytics. You can set up searches for terms you want to monitor on Twitter and see detailed info like sender, links, hashtags, etc.

5) Pricing: It’s affordable. Clicky will monitor up to 3,000 page views to your blog for free and up to 10,000 page views for just $4.99 a month. For most bloggers, that’s perfect.

6) Clicky iTool. You can install a Clicky widget that allows you to have a top line view of your analytics on your Google iTools page.

7) Clicky for your phone. You can download an app for your phone that let’s you view your analytics when you can’t get to a computer. Clicky for iPhone; Clicky App for other phones

How does Clicky compare to the other programs?: Great question.  Clicky has a chart on their site that compares several of the programs by offering. Click here to see it: Compare Analytics Sites.

Will Clicky work with your blog? More than likely yes, and it’s super easy to install too. Click here to check: Clicky Integration Details.

Screen shot of the tracking on Clicky: As you can see, Clicky also allows you to label visitors to your site if you know their IP address. This is a screen capture is of my Blog Troll’s activity from last month. Was pretty sad to see it was someone local.

BlogTroll Example

So there you have it. Just a few of the reasons why I like Clicky for analytics.  Have a analytics tool you like best? Would love to know about it as these things are changing all the time.  Please feel free to share it in the comments!

Jan 10 2010

Tech Notes: Adding a Category Link to your Menu Bar

This morning I set off on a mission to add links to both my technolgy and recipe posts to my top menu bar.  Not sure how to do it, I turned to Google.

To my dismay what I found was post after post filled with complicated language and terminology.  After visiting probably 20 web sites, I eventually figured it out, but it took way to long.  Thinking I can’t be the only blogger out there wanting to add a category link to my menu bar, I thought I would share with you how I did it. It’s really quite easy.

Here’s a quick tutorial for hosted WordPress users.

1) Under Appearance, click Editor.
2) On the right side, under Theme Files, click TopMenu.PHP

You should see something similar to this:

TopMenu Code

To add a link to a category, insert the following code, customizing for your blog:

Wordpress Menu Bar Code

Note, the new link will appear in the order you place it. So, if you insert this code at the bottom, it will appear on the far right of your tool bar.

Good luck!

Jan 7 2010

Get Your Sexy Back – SparkPeople.com’s The Spark Giveaway

Skinny ShannanGIVEAWAY CLOSED

Last week I wrote about how I was once again trying to lose weight. Seems this gal got a little too friendly with the Cherry Cordial ice cream, letting her late night snacking habit get the best of her, and now she’s paying for it with drumstick thighs and a new ginormous rear end. {Creepy talking in 3rd person, right??}

Well if you’ve checked in over at Cincinnati Losers you know that one of the main things I am doing to help myself achieve success is using a site called SparkPeople.com.  Spark People is a great (FREE) weight loss resource that offers meal & calorie tracking, fitness tracking, support and a myriad of healthy resources (including recipes).

They also have a great iPhone application that let’s you enter food items (even fast food/restuarant) and check the calorie/fat levels before you order.  It’s been a life saver – keeping me from eating items that sounded healthy, but in fact were not! {Unfortunately I did not use the application when we ate at Olive Garden and I trusted their menu when it said “low fat.” I checked online when I got home, and to my surprise “low fat” meant 17 grams of fat – UGH!!! Lesson learned.}

So, how am I doing so far with my weight loss you ask? Well I am happy to report that after my first week of watching my diet and exercising, I have lost just over 2lbs!  It’s working and I am psyched.

TheSparkCoverTo celebrate this first milestone. This step towards getting my “sexy back”, I am giving away two copies of SparkPeople.com’s new book, The Spark. Written by SparkPeople.com’s founder Chris Downie, The Spark is a 28-day plan for losing weight and getting in shape that just came out December 28th (Initial pre-order efforts put the book on Amazon’s (#8) and BN.com’s (#2) top 10 best-seller list in less than 4 days!).

WIN IT — Two lucky Mommy Bits readers will win a copy of SparkPeople.com’s book, The Spark.

There are several ways to enter, you can do one or all of them for additional chances:

  1. Leave a comment sharing one of your favorite dieting tips or weight loss tricks.
  2. Add my blog to your blogroll and leave a comment letting me know you did so.
  3. Follow the Mommy Bits blog on Facebook’s Networked blogs (left side bar, click follow this blog) and leave a comment letting me know you did so.
  4. Subscribe to my blog, and leave a comment letting me know you did so.
  5. Follow me on Twitter – @Shannanb, and leave a comment letting me know you did so.
  6. Tweet  “Check it out, @shannanb is giving away copies of @sparkpeople’s book The Spark on her blog http://ow.ly/TPEd” and leave a comment letting me know you did so.

Submissions are due by 5 pm on Friday, January 15th, 2010. Winners will be selected using a random number generator. Contest open to US residents only. Winners will have 48 hours to respond.

For those of you who are interested in purchasing The Spark, it is available online at Barnes & Noble, and through Amazon.

Thank you to SparkPeople.com for providing me with copies of The Spark to giveaway to my readers!