I’m constantly looking for a nice, quick and easy blog stats. Google Analytics is a great program, but it’s a bit complex for my daily checks. I’ve tried quite a few and recently Performancing Metrics came back online. It’s not really a new service, but it is a great step forward.

Performancing Metrics now uses Clicky stats as its core. It wasn’t built from the ground up, but rather re-branded. I’m not sure what it offers as unique, but regardless, it’s still a nice stats program with the promises of unique features yet to come.

So what makes Performancing Metrics different? Well it’s more about what is happening now then rather aggregating data. It’s great for seeing what’s happening today, but not great for finding out what happened over the past month.

The dashboard shows incoming links, unique visitors, searches and top content. None of it is older than today and it’s a nice overview.

Digging into the analytics a bit you can get visitor information like country, web browser, screen size and OS among others. The actions tab will let you see the visitor’s information including the time and date, what they clicked on, the web browser and OS they used and referring information. It’ll even count downloads, outbound links and FeedBurner subscribers.

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]

I’ve been considering writing a post on desktop blogging, however a few other blogs are doing that as we speak and I don’t want to be repetitive.

I’ve tried Performancing and can’t say I was a big fan.  I still have to use my browser so I might as well log into my blog admin.  Flock is the same idea.  I have used Etco in the past and it’s amazing, however I haven’t spent the money for it.  I’ve tried Mars Edit which feels like a lacking Etco and I’ve tried Qumana; twice.

The last time I tried Qumana it sucked.  I’ll be honest.  It either didn’t work the blog platform I was using or what, but now that I’m running Wordpress, I’ll try it again.  People are talking good things about it so we’ll give it another go and it is free.

Give me a month or so and we’ll see if I revert back to Wordpress’ admin or not.

What do you recommend?  I’m on a Mac and should spring for Etco but I don’t really need it.

[tags]performancing,flock,etco,mars-edit,qumana[/tags]