Posted by arianek on July 19, 2010 at 2:08am
Neil (drumm) just responded on an old issue I'd filed, http://drupal.org/node/780982 - I've got enough occupying my brain that I don't think I'm the right person to be tracking stats, but I thought I'd post here in case anyone would be interested in trying to get access to Google Analytics, and occasionally checking in on stats to see if there's any useful info about oft-used handbook pages and such.
If you are interested, drop a note here and we'll see if we can get access to the analytics account.
Comments
Sounds reasonable
Ariane, this sounds like the kind of well-contained project I'm able to take on at this time. If we can get access to the analytics account, I'd love to.
Let's look into it.
How analytics works with multiple users
In case anybody isn't familiar with Google Analytics, this is pretty easy. GA allows you to delegate access to the stats to anyone with a Google account. So it's not necessary for the powers to be to allow password access to the "main" drupal account - they just add your email address as an authorized user of the stats.
So the steps to do this:
You then go in through your own GA/Google account and have access to all the stats.
Great! Cliff - if you can get
Great! Cliff - if you can get your own account set up like Randy has written out the steps for, and then post (or send it to me through the contact form) the email address you used for it, I'll try and find out who can hook you in to have access.
Then we can see about updating the unpublished page that has the old stats and making it public again.
Thanks!
I have access to the GA stats
I have access to the GA stats too. Amazon was able to hook me up and should be able to help Cliff too.
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http://about.me/lisarex
Thanks, @lisarex!
I just contacted Amazon, so we'll soon see. (You did mean him, and not them, right?)
Amazon says it's not that easy
I'm not sure I completely understand the problem, but after reading this thread, Amazon e-mailed this to me:
Hmmm… node/345687 doesn't look like a handbook page to me, but since node/456777 generates a 404, I'm pretty sure he's posing a hypothetical question.
So is there a "handbook theme" that can be modified with the tracking code?
Or am I missing his point?
Just commented over on the
Just commented over on the issue where you'd posted this comment as well... http://drupal.org/node/780982 (and sent out a tweet in case someone knows more about how this was done in the past).
We are going to need to put
Or change it so that the title of the handbook is included in the page title.
So for this page:http://drupal.org/getting-started/before the title would be "Understanding Drupal | Getting Started | Drupal.org" Instead of just "Understanding Drupal | Drupal.org." Then if you are using google analytics you would go to Content >> Content by Title, and you'd be able to filter out based on the name of the handbook.
Or change it so that the
Or just include "Handbooks" in the page title. (Or both.)
Would make it easy to answer the original question - which are the most popular handbook pages? Just filter the Content by Title report using a filter like
\| Handbooks \| drupal.org$(this is POSIX regex: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55461). Could then set this up as a custom report and get GA to email it to whoever once a week/month etc...Worth considering
@arianek, does this approach make sense? Or would it be just as tedious as adding the special tracking code to each handbook page?
I have no idea! More
I have no idea! More technical folks, can you shed some light?
Either way (page title or
Either way (page title or tracking code) I would probably do it in the theme. i.e., if viewing a handbook page then automatically inject the additional stuff into the page title. (That could also be done via Page Titles module.) Or, insert a JS snippet and use Google Analytics' _setVar() or _setCustomVar(). However the page title approach feels simpler to me, which in my book is a good reason to use it. And if done in the theme would be very lightweight and not at all tedious (no need to modify *every* handbook page manually).
Advanced filters
So it would be nice to have extra information (like additional info in the theme) to do this with, but I think it can be done with Google Analytics Custom Filters. However, I haven't done it before. I have used it to do various reports by Drupal role, etc - the Google Analytics module has specific support for that.
Right GA does have ways to
Right GA does have ways to filter by URL and by page title, but there isn't anything unique about the url or the page title of the handbook pages to apply a filter to. Or at least it is inconsistent, like here: http://drupal.org/handbook/version-info, this is one that we could filter based on the url. But this: http://drupal.org/node/467026, which is a child page, gives us no indication from the perspective of GA that they are related pages within the site. Which is why pathauto (or something of that sort) would have been nice, then each of these could have been in /handbooks/[title of the handbook]/[whatever], and GA would have been able to filter them with no problem.
I'm in agreement with gpk, if there is a separate theme applied to the handbooks, fixing it there is the quickest way that I can think of. Course, there are lots of people that know more about Drupal than I do, so if somebody can think of an easier way of doing this... But I use GA quite frequently so I thought I'd chime in with what I know, hope it helps.
that (putting it in the
that (putting it in the theme) definitely sounds like the easiest way, but i think would need to wait till we have docs.d.o separated off the main site. in the meantime, tracking urls with /handbook/ in it would at least give us an idea of what of the higher level aliased pages are most viewed, including core modules pages, so still could be useful in the interim...
I'll pursue that approach
When I have time (this evening, I hope), I'll ping Amazon about setting me up to at least track pages with /handbook/ in the url.
Who knows — maybe I'll find some way to also get reports on activity for urls that people go to from pages that themselves have /handbook/ in the url, or at least how often people follow the link on a /handbook/ page to get to each of those pages.
At least we would have some data, which, if nothing else, will help us come up with better questions to ask when we can track all handbook pages.
awesome! thanks cliff!
awesome! thanks cliff!