For the first time since I started using a self-hosted version of WordPress well over a year ago, I had some trouble last night. Stats broke. Not permanently, you understand, and it had nothing to do with my installation. But I used the WordPress Stats plug-in which makes use of services on WordPress.com and apparently there were problems last night and running into today an a lot of people could not access their website stats.
Not a big deal really except for the fact that I AM OBSESSED WITH MY STATS. This seems to have crept up on me since early January when one of my goals was to increase the traffic that comes to my blog. I started keeping an eye on stats just to see if I was meeting my goal and, well, I got a little obsessive. I’m embarrassed to say this but I probably check a dozen times a day (a gross under-estimate) to see how things are doing, where people are being referred from, etc. And so when they were broken this morning, I had instant stat withdrawals.
But a little browsing told me about JetPack for WordPress which may have been released in conjunction with WordPress 3.1. It is essentially a collection of tools, including an alternate interface to WordPress stats. So early today I downloaded and installed it–and was incredibly relieved to have my stats once again. But I’ve also been pretty impressed with the features that JetPack provides to WordPress.
It is possible that the problem with the Stats for WordPress plugin has been fixed but I see no point in switching back now. JetPack does exactly what I need for stats–and actually does it a little better, adding in a few features that I didn’t have before. And though the old plugin was very reliable up until yesterday, my obsession with stats overrides brand loyalty. You can blame my day job for that: the last few years I’ve worked on numerous technical projects involving stats and metrics.
I’ve been completely brainwashed.
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I feel stats easily make everyone obsessive. I’m mean, not me, I don’t have a problem, but I know a lot of bloggers who do. I can control my habit. I can quit checking at any time. It starts small, you check once, and then once you get a taste… well, let’s just say I’ve seen some pretty nasty stats junkies in my day. If you’ll excuse me, I need to cook up my next hit of metrics…
Okay, so maybe you do get it. But you should have seen me yesterday when things broke. I was checking every 30 seconds to see if it had been fixed and when I finally switched to JetPack and had my stats back, I got the same feeling I had drinking Coca Cola after having been caffeine-free for 7 years. What a rush! 🙂