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WordPress Stats Plugin

November 19, 2015

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It’s important to know how many visitors you get to your website, but if you’re like me you just want easy access and easy to read stats. Let me share what WordPress Stats Plugin I use to achieve that. which lets me concentrate more on the content of my site.

The obvious first choice for web stats (or analytics) is Google Analytics. It’s not too difficult to set up, and you can check your stats on their website at any time. The stats are thorough, and there’s a lot of info that you can get, but it can be a bit tricky to navigate and find what you want quickly and easily. Or it might be just me 🙂

What I use on my most of sites is a wordpress plugin called WP Slimstat . As it’s a plugin, it is easy to install, and the major advantage to that of Google Analytics is you can view the stats on your website (within the WordPress admin backend).

Lets have a look at what the plugin will tell you. The main menu gives you these options:

The main option that I use for a quick view of visitors to my site is ‘overview’. From there I get a quick rundown of my pageviews (in a graphical format), top pages, recent search terms to reach me and top traffic sources to mention but a few. If you’re trying to rank for a particular keyword/phrase, this is where you can get a quick view.

The other option that I visit often is ‘audience’. From there I see a graphical representation of my visitor numbers for the last two months, plus a few other stats in tabular form (browsers, languages, screen resolutions, operating system and recent users) . It’s very easy at a glance to get the characteristics of your visitor base.

Access log is quite good if you want a live activity log of your visitors. I must admit I don’t use it but there is also a wealth of information presented there.

I’ll let you work out what site analysis, traffic sources and geolocation options give you in the way of information. I will mention, however, that even though you can get quite granular in what data you want, it is not overwhelming. The data is presented in a easy to read format and space well not to be too cluttered.

Don’t like the way the pages are laid out? Go to ‘customize’, and you and click and drag the display windows around, even to another page – perfect if you are only interested in specific information – put it all together. Below is a snapshot of part of the customize screen:

I probably should of mentioned this earlier, but this plugin and all of the features I have so far described is completely free and non restricted. As you could imagine, it is a very popular plugin and thus is updated quite often.

There are some additional, paid addons worth considering also. For a complete list, visit their website but the main ones of interest to me are the email reports (auto generated to your needs), and the heatmap. The heatmap is great as you get to visualize where on your site your visitors are clicking. The brighter the area, the more popular that particular part of the page is.

Still not convinced on this plugin. Check out this video below:

Do you use this WordPress Stats Plugin? If not, what do you use to track your visitors? Leave a comment below.

iOS9 better battery life

September 16, 2015

iOS9, iPad, iPhone

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Tonight, Australian time which will be morning time September 16 over in the USA, Apple will begin rolling out iOS 9. This will be in time for the release of the iPhone 6s and 6s+, as have been previous iOS releases.

I wouldn’t normally write about an iOS update , but reportedly Apple has tweaked its software to be less power hungry and has added a Low Power Mode to further extend the life of the battery. Let’s hope so!

That will be good news for all the users that get sub standard battery times because of all the apps and background processes that run. We all run more and more apps, and use our smartphones more so any more battery time would be great.

I read about some tests that were done to see how iOS 9 performed prior to the release today.

In the first test, the new iOS version was put on an existing iPhone 6, and an extra 40 minutes was gained. Not bad I guess, but not exactly great to write home about….. although I guess you could now because your iphone is still working (bad joke – sorry).

The second test that I read about was using the new ‘Low Power Mode’ – Turning the test phone on to Low Power Mode for the entire testing period pushed an iPhone 6 running iOS9 to a battery life of 11 hours and 38 minutes compared with 8 hours for a iPhone 6 running iOS8.

Pretty good I will admit, but let’s see how it goes with a ‘normal user’ and not under a controlled testing environment. So if you’re reading this after getting the new software version, please leave a comment below on the battery life now.

Just one other thing with the new iOS – Good news is that the download requires you to have only 1.3GB of free space, which is far less 4.58GB required by iOS8. I had barely enough room for a couple more apps and photos, so iOS 8 required me to have a big cleanup before installing.

Windows 10 Wifi Sharing

August 6, 2015

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There has been some misconceptions of the privacy and security surrounding Wi-Fi network sharing in windows 10 – a great feature to this new operating system.

Microsoft has named it Wi-Fi Sense, and this is how it works. Windows 10 does not share your Wi-Fi password per se, but it shares in encrypted version of that password. And by default it allows anyone in your Skype or Outlook or Hotmail contact lists (and even Facebook) to connect to your Wi-Fi network (assuming they are within range).

Now he is the bit that everyone is up in arms about. Yes the option to allow sharing is enabled by default, but there is another selection that says, “for networks I select…”.

So yes you have to do is take that extra step to make a Wi-Fi network available for sharing with your contacts. The option to connect to my network is off by default – I have to make a conscious decision to enable sharing for my selected network or networks.

Also what may not have been mentioned is that Wi-Fi sense only shares Internet access not access to local resources such as files etc.

Wi-Fi Sense is not new to Microsoft. It is a tried and true product, having been used in Windows Phone for some time so they have had a while to test and develop it.

Have you tried windows 10 yet? And have you tried Wi-Fi since? How do you find it? Leave a comment below

How to speed up your computer with Chrome Extensions

May 12, 2015

Chrome

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Here’s a couple of tips relating to extensions that you are using with Chrome – You’ll probably find your computer will run much better taking the below advice.

Maybe not the most accurate title, but read on and I’ll give you some pointers and share some ideas based on what I’ve read on the internet and what I actually do on my own computer.

If you’re like me, you will have a heap of extensions and have no less than 10 tabs open at a time. All these little things add to processing power and slow your computer up. But I have tinkered and got some good results from the following:\

You need an Ad blocking extension of some sort. Adblocker is great, but Ublock is much better. It uses less resources and memory. For the advanced user Ublock Origin is the one to use.

A small icon is installed on your toolbar (see highlighted in yellow below – forget the other icons). In its simplest form of usage, click on that and then you’ll see a larger blue icon (see pic below). Click on that to turn off blocking (ie it’s on by default).

How many tabs do you have open now? I have 23. The Great Suspender suspends unused tabs to free up system resources. You configure how long before tabs start getting suspended, so it’s good to tailor for your own habits.

One other thing – it may seem obvious and stupid, but delete the extensions you don’t use. Often i see people add extensions all the time but don’t actually use them or even know what they do!! Unless you have a fast computer and a lot of RAM, it would be better to get rid of them.

Did you try any of the above? Did it make a difference? Leave a message below.

iPhone 6 problem

April 22, 2015

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Everyone has problems with new new smartphones. It doesn’t matter what make or model you have – each of us has it set up differently and there are bound to be issues.

Do you have an iPhone 6 problem? Well you’ve come to the right place where I can possibly help you fix it as we go through some of the more common ones.

Soft/Low Volume – quite a common problem with new phones, but easily rectified in the majority of cases as mentioned in this post from back in 2011. Did you leave the factory screen protector on the phone when you unpacked it?

If that is all OK, check that you are connected to something like a handsfree device via bluetooth. Lastly, before a rest of the phone try turning the speakerphone function on/off to see if that makes any difference.

iPhone 6 won’t charge – as with any electrical or powered device, check that the powerpoint is actually working by plugging something else into it. Also try a different lightning cable but check yours to see that none of the contacts are actually corroded. Yes I know it’s a new phone but it only takes a second to check.

Red screen – a weird one but I have read about this iPhone 6 problem on a few forums. Try resetting the iPhone 6 by holding down the ‘sleep/wake’ button and the ‘home’ button for 10 seconds. The Apple logo will appear when your iPhone starts to boot.

It could be a software issue also, and being a new phone I would be taking it back to Apple to sort out. I would be interested to hear (via the comments section below) if any of our readers have experienced the red screen.

Bent iPhone 6 Plus – I’m sure everybody has seen pictures on Facebook and Twitter of bent Iphones. The only advice here is to take it back to Apple to inspect and decide whether it can be replaced.

No SIM card /SIM error – This could be as simple as a dirty SIM card that isn’t making correct contact. First of all, remove it from your iPhone and reinsert it?

If it still comes up with an error, remove it again and lightly rub the contacts with a pencil eraser.

I hope the above has helped you. Is there a iPhone 6 problem that you have which I haven’t listed? Leave a message below and I’ll endeavour to find a solution for you.