Displaying WordPress Posts' JetPack Statistics Using stats_get_csv()


Bar chart showing how many times a blog has been red over a year.

Here's a quick way to display how many times a WordPress post has been read. For this, you will need: A blog running WordPress. The JetPack plugin installed. The ability to edit your themes. Here's the snippet of code I'm using to add "This post has been read 12,345 times". I'll explain how it works […]

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One Million


It's only a silly number - and not a very accurate one - but it makes me happy. Thank you for reading - it has truly been my pleasure to write for you.

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Surrey Police and the Case of The Misleading Pie Charts


Surrey County Council have sent every household in the county a booklet explaining how our council tax is being spent. Within it is a highly political comment from Kevin Hurley, the newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner. He presents a pie chart showing how the police force spend its money. Take a look at it […]

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What I've Learned From A Crazy Month of Blogging


Well. That was an intense NaBloPoMo! I published a blog post every day in November - as I have for the last few years - but this was unlike anything that went before. I had over 50,000 viewers in a single day due to one of my posts, got hit by reddit and HackerNews, and […]

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What's The Front Page of HackerNews Worth?


One of the things that jollies me along during NaBloPoMo (where I have to write a blog post every single day in November) is seeing that people are reading my blog. I like watching the visitor counter tick gently upwards. I also love to see people discussing, arguing, and commenting on the posts I write. […]

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NaBloPoMo - Stats


As we enter another NaBloPoMo - where I try to write a blog post each day in Novemeber - I thought I'd take a look back at how this blog has developed. On Friday, October 30, 2009, I switched on WordPress statistics so I could get a better idea of what was popular on my […]

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Facebook's Mobile Adverts - Real Stats


Facebook has been getting a lot of criticism for its lack of mobile revenue. A fact it tried to hide from its IPO. Much ink has been spilled, but is it really necessary for Facebook to worry? Here's a quick case study. Facebook has, in its infinite wisdom, decided that I would be interested in […]

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Train Tickets With QR Codes


No, I'm not talking about Masabi's innovative technology, but of this rather odd bit of advertising found on the back of a train ticket. There's no specific call to action - but there's not much space to play with. Let's give it a scan... sigh A non-mobile site. With an Adobe Flash plugin in the […]

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TfL QR Followup - 5,000 scans per month!


At the start of 2012, I revealed how many scans TfL's QR campaign was getting. A lot of comments on Twitter & Google+ dismissed these results as a success. A typical response was: 70 scans a day? In a city of millions? Rubbish! This fails to address something that advertisers are conspicuously loathe to reveal […]

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Real QR Statistics from TfL


Last year, I suggested that TfL should use QR codes to point to their excellent mobile countdown service. Looks like someone was listening! I spotted this poster at a tube station. Nestled in the corner is a QR code pointing at the mobile bus countdown service! This is a close-to-perfect use of QR. Points to […]

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