If you have been running your site for some time and are regularly updating it with fresh, high-quality content, chances are you have built up a good amount of traffic over time. As a result, your visitors are most likely sharing your site via various social media networks, following it and commenting on your posts. And a high-traffic blog or website, in turn, gives you some bragging rights.
You should let the world know what your stats are, so that new visitors can quickly get an idea of the popularity of your blog. A strategically placed stats widget will grab their attention and serve as a good indicator that the blog is worth their time. In addition, displaying your impressive stats can help you attract new advertisers and make more money with your blog.
The WordPress Blog Vitals plugin by Tips and Tricks HQ allows you to show off your stats to your visitors in a form of a nicely designed widget. Read on for more information on this handy plugin, including brief guidelines on its installation, configuration and usage.
Features
WordPress Blog Vitals lets you display such stats as Google Page Rank, Technorati rank, Alexa rank, Twitter follower count, Feedburner feed count and Google plus one count. You can also show off the amount of posts you have published, pingbacks, trackbacks and comments. You can place it anywhere on your site, although it’s a good idea to add the widget to your “advertise here” space, which will give potential advertisers a clear idea on the amount of exposure they will get.
Installation
Download the plugin file from the WordPress plugins library. In your WP dashboard, go to the Plugins directory and click Add New. Click Upload and choose the file you have downloaded in the first step. Click Install and Activate.
If you want to skip the download, you can also simply go to your WP dashboard and use the Search function in the Plugins menu. Type “WordPress Blog Vitals” in the search bar and click Install Now when you find the plugin by Tips and Tricks HQ. Click Activate once the plugin is done installing.
Settings
Find the WP Blog Vitals item in the Settings menu in order to configure the plugin. Here you’ll be able to choose what types of statistics you want to display in your widget, enter your information such as Twitter username and Google Plus page ID, name your counter and decide whether you want it displayed with an image. You can also set the caching time in seconds – the feature that ensures a faster loading time of your pages.
Usage
You can use the widget on any post or page of your blog by adding the following shortcode:
[wp_blog_vitals]
To display it in the sidebar, select WP Blog Vitals from the Widgets menu under Appearance. Simply drag the widget to one of the sidebars available in your theme or your site’s footer.
You can also use the following function from a template file to show the stats:
<?php echo print_wp_blog_vitals(); ?>