4Q Magazine

Sat, 16 May 2009 11:19:37 +0100

This month some of my photographs have been featured in an article by the journalist Helen Jones. There are only a couple on the website, but there are plenty more in the print version of 4Q Magazine.

You can pick up a copy in loads of Northern Quarter bars such as Odd and Retro Bar.

iWeb and Google Analytics

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:18:44 +0100

So you have designed an iWeb site and you want to know how many people are visiting it? Google provides a free statistic tool known as Google Analytics that will keep track of the number of visitors to your site as well as many other statistic about your visitors. Normally for this to work you would have to cut and paste some html into each one of your pages, this can be time consuming and a little annoying if you’re not too familiar with editing html. However there is an easy short cut to adding the Google Analytics html to each one of your web pages. Before following the next few steps I suggest you visit this page and sign up for a Google Analytics account.

• Once you have set up your account login and and find your account number. It will be on the first page next to you websites URL and look like UA-XXXXXXX-X.
• Now go to this link and download the automator action. If you haven’t used automator before don’t panic, this is going to be really easy. Once you have downloaded the file install the action by double clicking on it.

• Ok, all is going well. We now need to add your account details to the automator. In your applications folder look for “Automator”, it will look like that little robot in the picture above.
• Once the program launches choose “Custom Workflow”.
• Now search for “google”

• Drag the item marked “Add Google Analytics” into the grey box on the right.

• Almost there now! You will see a new box appear as shown in the picture below. You need to add you account number and un-tick the box marked “Old Style Analytic Results”.

• Now go to the “File” menu and “Save as Plug-in”.
• In the next options screen give the plug-in an obvious name and select “Finder” in the drop down box.

• Now we need your site, if you use mobile me, connect to your iDisk and find the folder that contains your site, it will be under iDisk > Web > Your Sites Name. If you use iWeb to publish to a folder on you local computer, just find that folder.
• Right click on the folder, under “More” choose “Automator” and then you should see the name of your plug-in.

Once you click that item you will automatically add the necessary html to each one of your web pages. This will take a little time and you will see an automator progress item in the menu bar at the very top of your screen. After a few minutes this will be complete, if you don’t use mobile me you will have to upload your site to a server. Now if you wait 24 hour and login to Google Analytics you will see how many visitors you have to your site. The data only updates once a day so you can only ever see the stats for the day before.

Hope that helps!

Stuart

My Blog

4Q Magazine

iWeb and Google Analytics