Bringing Enterprise Analytics to WordPress
For the last couple months, I’ve been working on a top secret project that’s pretty fun. Webtrends is a client of mine who we’re assisting with reducing cost per lead, increasing conversion rates and improving online visibility (I know that’s generic… but these guys are in a highly competitive market!). With the high number of enterprise businesses utilizing WordPress, it made sense that Webtrends would provide an integrated offering… so we built it.
The Webtrends plugin isn’t just a crappy little plugin to add your analytics code to your footer – that would have been too easy. Instead, we brought Webtrends incredible analytics into the WordPress dashboard!
The project had it’s challenges! While Webtrends API is one of the best I’ve ever utilized (push a button in your Analytics app to get the API call!), trying to provide a unique user interface that matched WordPress was tough but I think we nailed it. There’s a settings page where you fill in your API details and select your account…. and you’re up and running!
The dashboard is also 100% Ajax driven to ensure pageload time are kept to a minimum. It was a joy to work through WordPress’ Ajax security model (a little sarcasm there, but I recognize the need to have a good one!).
Of course, the plugin adds the necessary footer JavaScript and noscript code (a huge advantage of Webtrends over free analytics is that you can still track folks with JavaScript turned off). It also brings back the pages that are the most popular, as well as Webtrends’ tweet stream, blog posts and support stream. Webtrends is moving to real-time functionality as well… this is great for Enterprise bloggers.
If you’re a Webtrends client and would like to beta test with us, please let me know. Your server will need to run PHP 5+ with the cURL library enabled so that the API calls can be retrieved! We’ll be talking more about the plugin at Engage 2010!
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Ole Laursen assisted the team as well. Ole to helped us properly integrate FLOT with the plugin. FLOT is an open-source jQuery based rich charting engine. I’m so sorry I forgot to mention Ole! He was wonderful to work with.
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