How to add Stats and Anti Spam to your blog

NOTE: This tutorial is intended for those running the latest version of wordpress for their yournicheblog blog and for those understanding how to add extra plugins. Adding plugins is MUCH easier in the latest version of wordpress, so I recommend you upgrade for that if nothing else. I wrote a post recently about upgrading to the latest version of wordpress here: http://www.help.yournicheblog.com/how-to-upgrade-your-blog-to-wordpress-27. If you don’t want to upgrade, you can learn about adding extra plugins here instead: http://www.help.yournicheblog.com/add-extra-plugin-blog

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Hello beautiful blogger!

I have been asked for this post by a few people. I have been planning on writing it for a while, so finally here it is. Long awaited indeed!

Stats: Do you want to know how many people are visiting your blog, and where they are arriving from? This post will help you set that up. You will be able to see how many people visit, see a fancy graph displaying trends, see the keywords people are searching for in Google when they find your blog, and see which of your posts are the most popular. What you will be doing here is hooking into the wordpress.com stats engines, so I’ll be guiding you through the set up. This stats setup is really essential for a blogger, and I should probably have included it in the Basic Help Guide! Better late than never

Anti Spam: Are you getting lots of spam comments on your blog? Most wordpress blogs do, because of how easy they are to find in google (which is a good thing)! Just like the spam filters in your email account, you can install a sophisticated anti spam system on your blog. The creators of the wordpress software have built a massive database of spam comments that learns every day as you use your blog. You hook your blog into this database and every time someone leaves a comment it will be checked against the database to see if it’s spam or not. Sounds complicated but once you have set it up you really don’t need to do a thing – it works in the background, and almost perfectly. You’ll love it, trust me.

The Basic Knowledge: The wordpress software is split into 2 main categories. The first is wordpress.com, where you can go to register a free blog that will be hosted on the wordpress.com servers. Your blog address would be something like http://yourblog.wordpress.com, and would be subject to the wordpress.com rules and regulations. The second is wordpress.org, which gives you the wordpress software, exactly the same wordpress software that is used to run wordpress.com, to install on your own server and run your own blog(s). Your blog (from yournicheblog.com) is the second kind. I have taken the basic wordpress.org software and turned it into a customized blog for your niche. But to get these stats and anti-spam additions you need to hook your blog into the wordpress.com rocket-powered engines. So for that we need a wordpress.com account and an API key. It’s just about marrying the 2 technologies, simple as that.

So let’s get on to the set up!

Stage 1: The Wordpress.com Stuff

1. Go to www.wordpress.com

2.  Click on the big massive ‘Sign Up Now!’ button.

3. Fill in the form with all your information, but when you get to the bottom of the form you’ll see these options:

Select ‘Just a username, please.’

4. Wordpress.com will now email you a link for you to click on, to confirm your email address is correct. Clicking on it will confirm and create your account, and you will now be able to log in to www.wordpress.com using the username and password you chose.

5. Now that you have successfully created an account and logged in to wordpress.com, you will see an admin area a little bit like the admin area for your own blog. If you look to the top left corner (right at the top of the screen) you’ll see  ’My Account’ with a little arrow pointing down. Hover over ‘My Account’ and click ‘Edit Profile’.

6. Now, on your profile page, you will see the secret API code I mentioned above. It will be right at the top of the page “Your WordPress.com API key is”, and then you’ll see a short code (it’ll be aboue 12 characters long). Save this code somewhere. Write it down, save it in a text document, memorise it if you’re Rain Man, whatever. Just make sure it’s available to you for the next 30 mins.

Stage 2: Setting up the Stats Plugin

1. Log in to your blog admin area

2. Head to the Plugins page to see what plugins you’ve got installed. Look for ‘Stats’. If you don’t have it installed, follow the instructions in either of the posts linked to in the NOTE section at the top of this post. You can find the Stats plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

3. When you have the plugin installed (I already did it for most of you) you will need to Activate it from the plugin screen. Your plugin screen will be http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/plugins.php

4. Once the plugin is activated you will see a message in a red box at the top of the page that will read: ‘WordPress.com Stats needs attention: please enter an API key or disable the plugin’. Click the link in the red box and you will be taken to the Stats settings page.

5. On the page that loads you will see a box, ready and waiting for you to type in your API code. Enter yours in, and save you changes.

6. Congratulations. You have set up stats for your blog. You can see your latest stats whenever you like by logging in to your admin area and looking for the ‘Wordpress.com Stats’ page that will be under the Plugins menu.

Stage 3: Setting up the Anti Spam Plugin

1. This process is much the same as installing stats, as above. First, log in to your admin area

2. Head to your Plugins page to see what plugins you’ve got installed

3. Look for ‘Akismet’ and activate it. If you don’t see it in the list you can find it here to install: http://akismet.com/download/

4. Once you’ve installed the akismet plugin, activate it. This is also done on the Plugins page in your admin area.

5. Just like when you installed the stats plugin, a red box will appear along he top of the page telling you to enter an API key. Click the link in the red box.

6. On the page that loads you’ll see a box waiting for your API code. Type it in and press Save.

7. You have now successfully set up anti spam for your blog comments. Oh my you are a clever one!

8. To see all the spam comments in their little spam jail just head to your Comments page and explore the links just above the top comment. You’ll see a few options, like All | Pending | Spam.

And there you have it! You’ve done it all!

If you need any help with other things for your yournicheblog blog, let me know in the comments or by email to lewis@yournicheblog.com. I’ll see if I can get a tutorial written up and published here to help everyone out.

If you need another blog built, contact me for a VIP returning customer discount

Lewis

P.S. did this tutorial work for you? Let me know in the comments if you had any problems!