Roller 5.1 and analytics tracking

[Glen Mazza <gl...@gmail.com>]

Hi Team, building on the referrers/tracking issue we discussed last August:

1.) I think we should more smoothly support Google Analytics tracking 
(or any other company's tracking[2][3], the configuration should work 
the same) by providing a "tracking key" field configurable at both the 
blog admin and individual blog level setting screen.  The "tracking key" 
value at the blog admin level will serve as the default for all blogs 
unless overridden at the blog-level; also, the blog admin configuration 
will have a yes/no checkbox on whether to allow individual blog 
overrides; if "no" the option to provide a tracking key will not appear 
at the blog level. (This catch will be imperfect as users can still 
override the tracking key by altering their templates if the admin gives 
them the ability to alter their own templates.)  Then, I'll provide a 
velocity macro that will output either the admin-level or 
individual-blog level tracking key based on the logic above, and add 
that macro to each of the themes that Roller ships with that macro. How 
does this all sound?

2.) Wordpress' direction seems to be to directly incorporate Google 
Analytics, having both free 
(http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/) and paid 
(https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/google-analytics-for-wordpress-mu-sitewide-and-single-blog-solution/) 
options, rather than roll-their-own like we do with our referral 
tracking.  We don't incorporate GA like they do, but that's OK for now 
as it's easy to log into Google Analytics anyway.

I'm wondering if after #1 above is done if this would be a good time to 
remove Roller's home-grown embedded referral tracking.  What we 
presently have--a tracker that keeps just the last 24 hours before 
resetting to zero, is not in the same league with Google Analytics or 
other specialized tools today in terms of its mining and data storage 
capabilities and we may be doing more harm than good to the project by 
retaining it (if the functionality is not core, as here, it's frequently 
better to have nothing and instead integrate well with third party 
specialized tools than retain something that's missing too much to be 
useful.)  As Dave mentioned earlier our homegrown product does allow 
bloggers to attach referrers to each blog entry during the 24 hours 
(something we would lose if we got rid of it) but I don't know of anyone 
doing that today, Roller or any other blogging tool.

I think it's safe to say nobody here has the time or inclination to 
improve on our home-grown referrer tracking while there are so many fine 
3rd party tools already out there giving us what we need. Removing it 
pushes the focus towards improving Roller's ability to integrate with 
3rd party trackers and put energy instead into more fruitful areas of 
the code (theme modernization and planet functionality improvement in 
particular)  Strategically, it doesn't seem good for a webapp to 
roll-its-own referrer tracking; either the homegrown referrer tracking 
ends up looking subpar to the 3rd party specialized tools, or so much 
effort is made trying to duplicate specialized products that the core 
functionality of the WAR--i.e., for us, a blogging tool--suffers.  
WDYT?  If team members are still unsure, we can table this issue for 
another year, or what we can do is delete it in trunk but be open to 
restoring it if we get sufficient clamor for its return.

Regards,
Glen

[1] 
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2051368/4-simpler-alternatives-to-google-analytics.html
[2] http://piwik.org/what-is-piwik/

Re: Roller 5.1 and analytics tracking

[Matt Raible <ma...@raibledesigns.com>]

+1 for directly incorporating Google Analytics. I use GA in my blog now,
but it doesn't track RSS. Would love to see it integrated so RSS is tracked
as well.


On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Glen Mazza <gl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Team, building on the referrers/tracking issue we discussed last August:
>
> 1.) I think we should more smoothly support Google Analytics tracking (or
> any other company's tracking[2][3], the configuration should work the same)
> by providing a "tracking key" field configurable at both the blog admin and
> individual blog level setting screen.  The "tracking key" value at the blog
> admin level will serve as the default for all blogs unless overridden at
> the blog-level; also, the blog admin configuration will have a yes/no
> checkbox on whether to allow individual blog overrides; if "no" the option
> to provide a tracking key will not appear at the blog level. (This catch
> will be imperfect as users can still override the tracking key by altering
> their templates if the admin gives them the ability to alter their own
> templates.)  Then, I'll provide a velocity macro that will output either
> the admin-level or individual-blog level tracking key based on the logic
> above, and add that macro to each of the themes that Roller ships with that
> macro. How does this all sound?
>
> 2.) Wordpress' direction seems to be to directly incorporate Google
> Analytics, having both free (http://wordpress.org/plugins/
> google-analytics-for-wordpress/) and paid (https://premium.wpmudev.org/
> project/google-analytics-for-wordpress-mu-sitewide-and-
> single-blog-solution/) options, rather than roll-their-own like we do
> with our referral tracking.  We don't incorporate GA like they do, but
> that's OK for now as it's easy to log into Google Analytics anyway.
>
> I'm wondering if after #1 above is done if this would be a good time to
> remove Roller's home-grown embedded referral tracking.  What we presently
> have--a tracker that keeps just the last 24 hours before resetting to zero,
> is not in the same league with Google Analytics or other specialized tools
> today in terms of its mining and data storage capabilities and we may be
> doing more harm than good to the project by retaining it (if the
> functionality is not core, as here, it's frequently better to have nothing
> and instead integrate well with third party specialized tools than retain
> something that's missing too much to be useful.)  As Dave mentioned earlier
> our homegrown product does allow bloggers to attach referrers to each blog
> entry during the 24 hours (something we would lose if we got rid of it) but
> I don't know of anyone doing that today, Roller or any other blogging tool.
>
> I think it's safe to say nobody here has the time or inclination to
> improve on our home-grown referrer tracking while there are so many fine
> 3rd party tools already out there giving us what we need. Removing it
> pushes the focus towards improving Roller's ability to integrate with 3rd
> party trackers and put energy instead into more fruitful areas of the code
> (theme modernization and planet functionality improvement in particular)
>  Strategically, it doesn't seem good for a webapp to roll-its-own referrer
> tracking; either the homegrown referrer tracking ends up looking subpar to
> the 3rd party specialized tools, or so much effort is made trying to
> duplicate specialized products that the core functionality of the
> WAR--i.e., for us, a blogging tool--suffers.  WDYT?  If team members are
> still unsure, we can table this issue for another year, or what we can do
> is delete it in trunk but be open to restoring it if we get sufficient
> clamor for its return.
>
> Regards,
> Glen
>
> [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2051368/4-simpler-
> alternatives-to-google-analytics.html
> [2] http://piwik.org/what-is-piwik/
>
>