Thanks for coming by and elaborating on Woopra. You’ve answered a lot of questions and concerns of those who have commented.

Yes, I agree, the BWAB community rocks!

To answer a few of the issues on Woopra…it totally changes the way you look at the numbers. As many have said, the numbers are important to help you direct your content even more for your readers. Your blog is about them, after all, so keeping an eye (without becoming obsessed) is important if your blog is your business. If it isn’t, who cares.

How does Woopra work? Woopra is a two part web analytics program. Woopra is in private beta, which means invitations are done through the site and now only done occasionally as we have over 25,000 beta testers signed up. If you want to join the testers, sign up and be patient. We may be approving another batch soon.

Once approved, install a javascript or Plugin on your blog or website. This flags your site to the Woopra servers so they can start collecting data. You can view the data collected on the Woopra site in a simple form. Install the Woopra desktop client (software) on your computer and your head will explode. That is the power tht is Woopra and allows you to graphically evaluate all your stats, see the maps, and chat across the web to your visitors and such. That is the powerhouse and it uses your computer, not your website or server, to help you understand what’s happening on your site.

Does Woopra slow down my site? The reports are that Woopra in the earliest stages was smaller and faster than Google Analytics. And the code has been totally rewritten since, so it’s even faster. We rarely get a report of any impact on the site at all. The data isn’t crunched on your site. It is handled on the Woopra servers and the desktop client (software) you install on your computer does the job of converting the numbers to beautiful graphics – without impacting your website in any way. The only load is a tiny javascript added to your blog’s template files. Most people have tons of javascript added to their site for design purposes. An example is the CommentLuv WordPress Plugin Barbara has installed in her comments. Getting rid of that and replacing it with straight CSS would speed up your site more than any impact Woopra has. Though the CommentLuv is something some bloggers like, so I was only using that as an example.

How does Woopra compare to other stat programs? Ah, the list is long. Briefly, Woopra is NOW. No waiting. You see what is happening right now on your blog. All the other stats have a time delay. This allows you to respond immediately to things happening on your blog, such as a sudden traffic spike, a big referrer (someone blogs about your blog post), or someone who might need help.

Woopra is very visual. You get charts and graphs that help you understand the numbers. You also get analytics built in to help you dissect the numbers. For example, can your stats program tell you how many of your referrals (incoming traffic) are coming from Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us, and other specific sources beyond search engines? Many are finding they get a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon and none from Twitter, yet they put all their energy into Twitter and none into StumbleUpon. Is this good or bad? Depends? Maybe you should kick up what you are doing on Twitter to direct more traffic and get involved with StumbleUpon to find out why so many are using it. Directing your energies to more specific targets rather than in all directions is much smarter.

A feature I adore is the custom event notification feature. I can set up an event to alert me when someone arrives from a specific URL. I have an alert that triggers when someone comes from Lorelle on WordPress to Taking Your Camera on the Road, so I know how much work that site is giving my other site. One blogger noticed some suspicious activity by a visitor so tagged that visitor so they would be alerted when the visitor returned. By tracking their activity on the site, the blogger realized that this person was trying to hack into their computer. We’ll have articles on how to detect such abuse on the Woopra blog in the future.

Learning from where your visitors are coming from, geographically as well as through referrals, and the rest of the amazing statistics gathered helps you understand more about your visitors. The more you know, the more specific your blog decisions can be.

Is Woopra hard to use? When I look at Google Analytics and other stats programs, I feel like I am back in kindergarten. The numbers are overwhelming at first. Woopra is visually intimidating for new web users, but it is actually much easier to use as there are so many charts and graphs that make the numbers make sense. For example, in the Analytics panel, if you clicked on the Referrers tab, you would be greeted with a pie chart giving you a quick overview of where your traffic is coming from. Nice and clean and easy to figure out.

Stats Teach: A lot of people are overwhelmed with statistics and don’t know what to do with them. It would be great, Barbara, to have a series that looks at how blog statistics work and how to learn from the numbers. As many have learned, your stats teach you about how people are using your blog, what they are looking for, what brings them there, and what to add or subtract. No matter how you monitor your numbers, you can learn from them.

Is Woopra safe? There are tons of statistic programs on the web and have been for years. The information gathered by Woopra is no different from those. Except that if you are using WordPress, the Woopra WordPress Plugin helps track information stored in the database. All “personal” information is volunteered, not taken, from the user. For example, when you comment, you leave a name, email, and URL in the comment form. That information is used to covert the Visitor #143563 to Lorelle VanFossen, so you are tracking a person not a number. Don’t volunteer that information if you don’t want anyone to know it.

As for the feeling that someone is watching you, that’s your problem. As Barbara said, you never know when someone is or isn’t checking their stats. Really, what are they seeing? The pages you visit? Well, I should hope so. They wrote and published them. They must want them visited. They are probably jumping for joy someone stopped by. Think of the pleasure you are giving them, not the worry about whether or not they are playing peeping blogger.

Remember, if you volunteer it, it’s public information, no longer private, no matter where you put it. If you don’t want it known, don’t put it out there.

Woopra, and most other sites, rely upon javascript to track the numbers. Want to travel the web anonymously? Disable javascript in your browser. There are FireFox extensions that will help you do that, but it is painful in IE and other browsers. The problem with that is that so many sites are designed with Javascript. There are also proxies and other methods to access the web anonymously.

I hear what you’re saying about Myspace and Facebook, however, it is with both of those social media sites we hear about the most problems with perverts lurking around children’s “spaces”, often luring them to meet (kidnappings and deaths have occurred). The perverts know they aren’t being “tracked” so what a good opportunity for them. Let’s say, visitors could be tracked on Myspace or Facebook. I’m guessing our children would be a whole lot safer.

The subject of blog statistical programs and what they track will undoubtedly be debated for years to come.

I’m not sure what the consensus is, but I believe this isn’t good for personal privacy.

There are certain lines that haven’t been crossed, and shouldn’t in my humble opinion.

Take a look at myspace and facebook for example. They make it, purposely, so that you can not tell who visited your page.

I simply think anonymity in this regard is the way it ought to be.

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