Web Statistics

Finding out how many people are visiting the blog is the next task. Along with this it is possible to collect other statistics, such as where in the world the visitors are coming from and what page they come to the site from.

There are many free online services that can be used. I have used Startcounter before and decided to try a different counter this time. I picked Onlinewebstats, went through the registration process and was given a chunk of HTML code to insert on my blog template.

This I did, but Blogspot would not accept the code. I scratched my head for half an hour, trying different variations, but ultimately failed.

So I went back to Startcounter and successfully set it up. You should be able to see the counter at the bottom of this page. The step by step process is as follows:

Go to the Startcounter website and register as a user. I'd done this five years ago, so can't advise on the process, but it should be straightforward.

Log on to your new user account on Startcounter. Go to the "My Projects" page and click "Add New Project".

You will be prompted for your blog name and blog address, also for a variety of other choices, which are self-explanatory.

Having gone through the options, the site provides you with a chunk of HTML to paste into your blog template.

Select the HTML, right click it and COPY it into your paste buffer.

Now go to Blogspot. Log in and choose "Customise".

Choose "Edit HTML"

Now, scroll through the template on the Blogspot page. Go almost to the end until you reach the tag.

Put your cursor just before this tag. Right click and PASTE.

Preview before you save!

Then save and it is done.

There is another precaution you could take before messing around with the template. That would be to copy the entire template into a Notepad file before you make any changes. Then if there were any problems, you could always revert to this saved version.