December 16, 2014 archive
Dec 16
The WordPress Plugin I Want: Statistics About Content Creation – Number of Posts, Pages, etc.
As every year draws to a close, I'd like to be able to generate a report that says something like:
In 2014, we created:
- 210 blog posts
- 43 pages
- 25 events
- 72 articles (or pick some other 'custom post type' that you create)
Now, for some sites, like the Deploy360 site at work, I'd like to be able to do this on a quarterly basis so that we can provide updates internally about how much content we've created. For this reason I'd love to be able to choose a date range for a report. I also want the plugin to be able to work with custom post types, as on a couple of sites I've used that feature to create new post types with certain formats so that they are easy to enter by authors.
That's the minimum of what I'd like - the number of posts, pages and other content types created within a given interval.
Beyond that, a few other features would be great:
- the word count for each type of content and in total;
- these kind of statistics based on categories and tags so that I could know how much writing is happening on different topics (kind of like the Story Board in the EditFlow plugin only with counts);
- these kind of statistics for each author of content, so I could understand the output of the writers on a site.
All of which would be great... but the key is the early part about the counts of content type over a time interval.
Anyone using a WordPress plugin that does something like this?
If so, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! Either as a comment to this post or on social media... or via email.
I've spent time searching the WordPress Plugin Directory but so far I haven't found anything that fits what I need. A great number of the "statistics" plugins are related to visitor statistics, i.e. how many people visited your site - but I don't need that. I already have Google Analytics and the Jetpack plugin helping me there.
What I want are content statistics.
I want to be able to easily see how much content I and the others who write on a site are producing over a given interval.
I'd note that for some sites (such as my work) I'd be willing to pay for a plugin like this if it were from a commercial plugin developer.
Seen anything like this?
UPDATE: I should have noted that the closest plugin I've found so far is Word Stats, but the plugin hasn't been updated in almost 2 years and while it works fine on one of my sites, it has a problem creating reports on another of my sites and another site went unresponsive after I activated the plugin (and so I quickly ssh'd in and removed the word-stats plugin directory).
An audio commentary is available as TDYR 199:
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Dec 16
Facebook’s iOS Apps Now Work On IPv6-Only Networks
Facebook continues to demonstrate their commitment to making sure that people can access Facebook from whatever networks they may be on – and particularly new IPv6-based networks. Not only is Facebook moving to an IPv6-only internal network, but now comes word that their iOS mobile applications, both the regular Facebook app and also the Facebook Messenger app, can work perfectly fine on an IPv6-only network.
The information was relayed by Facebook’s Paul Saab in, of course, the IPv6 Group on Facebook. Back on December 2, Paul wrote:
The most recent release of the Facebook iOS app works on IPv6-only networks. The interesting thing in making this all work, is the example Reachability code that apple released really only showed how to implement it for IPv4 or hostnames, but using a hostname was broken if you were on an IPv4 only network and the hostname was dual stacked. Anyway, the main app is now fixed and our Messenger application will be updated soon to also have the fix.
And late last night he posted:
The FB Messenger was released and now supports IPv6-only networks
As the discussion thread indicates, the Android versions of the two apps should also work on IPv6-only networks but there are currently issues with Android devices in general working on IPv6-only networks.
The key point here is that as some network operators are now deploying IPv6-only networks because of a lack of IPv4 addresses. Consider the case of T-Mobile USA. Facebook’s applications will work fine and give the best possible user experience on those IPv6-only networks. Some of these new IPv6-only networks, such as those in the mobile space, use technologies such as 464XLAT to enable IPv4-only applications to still work. BUT… any such translation technologies do add complexity and introduce some degree of latency (which might be quite tiny, but still there).
Facebook is avoiding all of that by making sure that their mobile applications work well in IPv6-only networks.
Those apps will work over native IPv6 networks to connect back to Facebook’s IPv6 data centers. Without needing to pass through some IPv4 gateway or translation tool, the apps should provide the fastest and simplest connections – which means a better experience for users.
Now, the Facebook applications also work fine in a “dual-stack” mixed IPv6/IPv4 network. They have for quite a long time now. But Facebook has now tested these apps on networks without IPv4 – and that is a difference.
Congratulations to Paul Saab and the rest of the team there at Facebook for taking this step – and we hope that other mobile application developers will see this and consider testing their applications on IPv6-only networks as well.
As we run out of IPv4 addresses and have to look at IPv6-only networks with some kind of IPv4 translation on the edge… the best possible user experience is going to be with those applications and services that can avoid all of the IPv4 translation and work completely over IPv6.
P.S. If you would like to get started with moving your application or service to IPv6, please visit our Start Here page for pointers on how to begin!
