A Month’s View
I like numbers. It’s just who I am. I can’t help it - I swear! I like to know my gas mileage each trip I take in the car (a trip being anywhere farther than 1 mile). I like knowing stats websites especially. I frequently scan over Google Analytics of a number of my sites and periodically I’ll really read deep into them. Today I was looking over the visitors of my blog because it’s been getting decent traffic due to my Catch-All PHP Form Processor. I like to know my audience and how they’re viewing my site so I took this info down more as a ‘note to self’ than anything.The majority of my Analytics reports are for client’s sites and not my own personal ventures. Due to this they are typically full of IE6 browsers and Windows XP in the 85 percentage range for OS being used. Looking through my report for erikreagan.com was refreshing noting the following:
Operating System
- 66% of users were on Windows XP
- 14% of users were on OS X
- 13% of users were on Windows Vista
Browser
- 53% of users were using Firefox
- 34% of users were using IE (of which 74% were on v7 and 24% were on v6)
- 9% of users were using Safari
- 25% were using 1024×768
- 22% were using 1280×1024
- 14% were using 1280×800
- Over half of the viewers had the most up to date Flash plugin
- 62% of my traffic is straight to my Catch-All PHP Form Processor (no surprise as it is my only custom resource provided at this point)
- 5% of users were on an iPhone
- More Windows users are using Firefox
- More Mac users are using Safari
- All Linux users are using Firefox
Take Heed!
I certainly encourage developers to monitor such data as it can highly impact decisions made through out the development process. This type of data comes especially in handy when taking a current site or service and improving upon it. Using tools like Google Analytics can do nothing but bring insight to your approach while designing and developing.
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Comments
Hello Erik,
I saw your text at Wordpress support:
“I just found a plugin called Get Custom Field Values that does exactly what I want. It allows me to read the custom field data and echo that anywhere outside the loop. I will probably venture to create a plugin that allows me to browse my media for the file and insert that way but for now this works great.”
I also want header images combined with pages of my choice. Could you tell me how to do that with the plugin you mentioned?
Your help would be much appreciated!
Erik
I would be happy to help you out with that. The site I am using that solution for is currently hosting on an internal server at my office and I can’t access certain details from home right now. I can tell you that the plugin I found is by Scott Reilly and is called Get Custom Field Values. I got it to do just what I wanted and I’ll plan to email you with details sometime on Monday. How does that sound?
Hi Erik, so that’s how you had found my blog !!!
Thank for your visit and comment, and congratulations for the girl who’s coming. Have a nice day !