The past few days have been great for the FB StandardsStats plugin. Not only have I been in communication with the FeedBurner folks, it also got mentioned on the FeedBurner buzz blog. That gave the plugin some great exposure and uncovered a few bugs. It’s since been updated and re-packaged and FB StandardStats 1.0b is now available.

The biggest update is how the plugin displays the FeedBurner code. It seems that I was showing it not only on blog posts, but also in the feed. This could cause issues and confusion with feeds burned at FeedBurner. So I added a few lines of extra code to ensure that it only adds the StandardStats code in the browser version of posts and not in the feeds.

Other than that, there were a few download issues that could have come from web server issues or other formatting oddities. I think those are all worked out now.

Ohh and one more, if you get a 404 error when trying to update the FB StandardStats options page, that means that you uploaded the entire directory. The only file that needs to be uploaded is fb_standardstats.php. No folders.

While working on a review of StandardStats from FeedBurner, the only real negative thing I could come up with was the fact that the install wasn’t simple for non-techies. Sure it’s easy for some, but I thought it could be easier. So I created the FeedBurner StandardStats Wordpress plugin.

FB StandardStats makes installing FeedBurner’s stats code simple. No files to edit and no wondering if you got the code in the right place. Simply put in your user ID and the plugin will do the rest.

As a bonus, the plugin can also be used to show FeedFlare links on each blog post.

To Install:

1. Download FB StandardStats 1.0b
2. Upload fb_standardstats.php to the /plugins/ directory of your blog.
3. Activate via the Plugins area in Wordpress’ admin.
4. Go to the FB StandardStats options page and enter your StandardStats ID. Instructions on finding this ID are on the FB StandardStats options page.

That’s it. The plugin automatically enters in the code to the template files and you’ll start getting stats as soon as you get visitors.

Let me know what issues you run across and any success stories too. I’ve got it running on three blogs including this one and it seems to work fine.

If you didn’t hear, Performancing’s blog stats are no longer. They sold that part of the company to PayPerPost and PayPerPost returned it. Now no one is taking care of the stats and it’s been closed.

So my first thought was, what do I replace it with? Google Analytics is great, but a bit overwhelming for most people. Mint is one of my favorite stats packages, but costs $30 and I wanted something free for now. Who doesn’t? That’s when I saw Feedburner’s StandardStats.

StandardStats will track and report on blog visitors, inbound traffic, browser usage, OS usage, outbound clicks and much more. I just installed it and I’m waiting for my stats to come poring in.

With Feedburner’s track record with feed stats, I have high hopes for StandardStats. Only time will tell though. Give me a week or two and I’ll report back with my findings. If you’ve been using StandardStats, let us know what you think.

[tags]feedburner,standardstats,mint,performancing,payperpost[/tags]

While at SES in Chicago, I got to hear Rick Klau of Feedburner talk a few times. While listening to him, I realized that Feedburner’s services are well worth the free account; not to mention the paid account.

Feedburner is a feed management service. It takes your blog generated feed and works with it to ensure maximum compatibility with all feed readers. It also help make sure that your podcast, images and video are all correctly embedded and then makes your feed user friendly by adding CSS and subscription buttons to your feed’s page.

Not only that, but you can put in your Amazon ID to ensure your Amazon links make you money, you can also tie your Flickr images into your feed, get click through counts, see how many subscribers you have, see how people are using your feed and that’s just a few features of the free account.

The Feedburner reader stats are one of the main reasons I’ve used Feedburner in the past. Unfortunately Wordpress doesn’t have that kind of information yet. (Unless you have a Wordpress.com account.) I’ve been a little wary of running all my feed traffic though Feedburner in the past and it turns out I was worried for nothing.