Sexy Stats
You may have noticed a change to your stat charts a couple of weeks ago. We ditched Flash in place of a more robust charting library called Flot. If you didn’t notice, go check it out because you can view all of the new charts with modern browsers including mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad. Sooo sexy! Today we updated the charts to use bars instead of points and lines. We’ve also made the stats page super sexy.
Each module can be opened and closed, moved, or hidden completely. If you don’t want to see a module, minimize it with one click or use the Screen Options to keep it out of sight. Customize everything and view stats the way you want to.
As you hover over each bar in the chart it changes color and displays a tooltip, giving you more information about the data. If the chart is showing data by day, Saturdays and Sundays have a light gray background to make it easier to see weekly patterns. Under the chart you’ll notice a new area, called “fortune cookies,” where we’ll highlight key stats.
During the redesign we went with bar charts because the end of one day and the beginning of another shouldn’t be connected. Each day starts at zero and we think bar charts work much better for this type of data. We hope you’ll agree once you get used to the change.
In this first phase of the stats redesign we’ve focused on the main page. This will allow us to collect feedback from you so we can tweak everything as we go. We’ve only mentioned a few of the highlights here, so take your stats for a drive around town to get used to the feel. Let us know what you like and what you might change. As we gather feedback we’ll apply a bit of sexy to the other stat pages.
Sites using our Stats plugin on a self-hosted blog will see an update after we iterate on the new design.
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This is a great change! =D
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Stats are sexy and addictive.
Thanks for the update: we’ll be staring longingly at these for much of the coming year hoping for the bars to get bigger, and it’s nice to have something pretty to look at!
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Great, quite organized and very efficient.
This’ll be cool when I get to utilizing it.
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Being honest, I preferred the points and lines, but the stats page looks a lot cleaner now 🙂 Well done guys 🙂
Oh, and extra cookies for ditching Flash 🙂
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Sexy indeed.
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I like the lines better than bars. I like how the weekends are highlighted in the new ones.
I definitely do not like how yesterday and today are not on the same page. It is very difficult to compare these stats if they are not on the same page. maybe if there was a way to expand the section, rather than toggle.
Also, I shouldn’t have to click a button to see subscriptions. That’s a very important piece. You could probably fit all the General Stats on box, all visible at the same time.
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Well, I’ve been staring at the stats for some time and I’m not getting “sexy” from it. Clearly your mileage varies.
I preferred it when it wasn’t the bar charts if I’m honest. I see your reasoning, but personally preferred the presentation the way it was as I thought it better conveyed the popularity of a blog over weeks and months. Not a biggie though as Quancast still go with the points and lines.
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Two thumbs up. ^_^
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Love the new stuff…keep it coming!
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I think the line chart (instead of bars) was more insteresting. You say days should not be linked, but linking them gives a a more graphic view of “up” and “down” changes in your stats. Upward and downward lines cacth more immediatly the eye than the monotonous parallel bars. So it would be nice if users could chose between line charts or bar charts.
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I prefer all the information laid out in front of me instead of the tabs. Personally speaking, the new format doesn’t do a lot for me.
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Yeah I noticed the change. I like it, I liked the other way also. HAHA I am content with whatever chart system your lil’ heart desires 😀
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So I’m getting used to the bars and I kinda like them now. But just one question: When viewing by week, would it be possible for it to say like “Sept 27 – Oct 3” instead of “Week 30” or whatever week it is. A quick reminder of what month a week was in would help to better analyze the stats, to see if you get more hits in the first week or the middle week of each month. I don’t think people think in terms of what number week it is. Peace, Linda
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Stats are lookin’ good. I’m OK with the bars and I understand your reasoning. I like that more data is able to be viewed on the main stats page now.
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I hope to see ‘page views’ offered as option on individual posts. That would add meaning to each post.
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You can see page views for each post. Click on the little chart graphic next to the post title in the Top Posts and Pages area. You can also click the chart icons when viewing your posts list.
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Talk about getting ‘barred up’! SuperSexy!
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I actually preferred the line graphs.
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I’m still not convinced that clicking on my own blog is not counted. I don’t have a lot of visitors, yet. But I’ve noticed that when I make some text changes and then view the page to admire my work, those are the pages that come up as having been viewed. Too much of a coincidence, I think.
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Make sure you are not logged in when you visit the blog. If you are logged out when visiting your views will be counted.
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I prefer the old stats…it’s just my opinion 🙂
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Great! What I see today (Sept. 2nd) with the “today and yesterday” tabs on the four panes under the bar chart is straight to the point.
All the needed info at a glance. Keep it this way 🙂 Thanks for the change and the efforts, great work!
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Oh my god, this is awesome!
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Amazing guys
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The new stats are seriously annoying — “innovation” that has nothing to do with ease of use. The tabs are a drag; the “at-a-glance” layout of the old stats was vastly superior to and less fussy than this glitzy new junk. Go back to the old way and quit trying to be so falsely impressive. Change isn’t always a step forward.
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We should be able to pick between bars and lines. The lines were a lot easier to read and showed the progress much better!
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Bars are better than lines. Thank you.
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No this is appalling, please change it back.
I’ve not been able to see any graph for some time, but at least i could go all the hassle of scrolling down to the summary tables and then scrolling through them to find out how many people visited yesterday. Now i can”t even do that.
And the other information is unclear what is what, and in a very small typeface.
Definitely a back ward step for a feature that I used to recomend WordPress for.
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I liked the previous much more. Also, is there a posibility to see, not the number of clicks, but of visitors?
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We do not track unique visitor data.
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I’d like to be able to see where my readers are from without having to add a widget on to my page, Google and Blogger’s Stats do this.
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This change is really fresh and attractive! I look forward to every addition. You’re making my new quest into the blog world very user friendly and fun. Thanks, all!
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Very well done – thank you!
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Hmmm. Liked the old style better. More information without as many clicks. Creatures of habit get used to new stuff, though.
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The new statistics format with its neat rows of columns is both neater, and easier to read. Now instead of seeing jagged peaks and harrowing valleys, it just looks like a Roman building site where readers are represented by ever growing legions of columns.
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I love the new stats. Noticed a change recently because I don’t often check my stats.
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Thank you. Load time is so much faster.
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Definitely prefer it. The Flash would never work on my office computer, only at home, but now it works everywhere – happy days.
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I absolutely love the added feature of switching to my other blogs and the highlighted bar when selected. Yet, I miss the line graph because it helps me visualize statistical trends. Would you consider adding a line graph feature?
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Actually you could always switch between your blogs, but the switcher was in the upper right where not many people noticed it. 🙂
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Good job. Prefer line chart, though
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i liked the other one better 😦
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Thank you! I can finally see the weekends versus weekday results. This was always in the back of my mind. Bars or Lines doesn’t matter much to me. I really like the changes and must say it was a pleasant surprise when they showed up.
Keep up the great work! WordPress continues to make blogging a real pleasure.
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To be honest, I actually don’t like this new one as much as the old one. But I guess it’s just me…
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i honestly really prefer the points and lines. Wish there was an option. That is my favorite feature too.
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I like the new stats better too! Thanks!
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I love it! Thanks a lot!
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I notice on your example (the webshot on this page) there is a “Humanize” tab. I want one of those and I don’t even know what it does. Please give me a “humanize” tab too so this whole blogging thing will seem more human. Thank you in advance for humanizing statistics for us. Something my stats professors were never able to do.
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Check out previous comments on how to enable it. 🙂
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I like this better. Sooo cool!! Flash should only be for videos, animations, and games.
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Woah, it seems like a really annoying change but I’m sure that I just need a bit of time to get used to it!!
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The new stats are great! WordPress has always been the best, and you are keeping it that way.
Now if we can just do something about the referrer spam that distorts our stats on page visits . . . There must be some way to do that. Does anyone have any ideas?
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We’re working on the referrer spam problem.
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I like it much better, thanks. Not sure “sexy” is what I would call it but, hey, if that’s your idea of sexy, cool.
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I’ve tried…and tried to like the bars, but I miss the lines and points. I, too, would like to have a choice between the bars and lines/points.
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Just noticed today….
Great! We’ve moved on! Less flash!
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1. Prefer the old, but open to the new! (And, yes, while I read the New York Times online now, I miss the newsprint.)
2. I wish I could see more than a month’s worth of stats. Any way to look back further?
3. It is rather daunting to see the numbers on your sample graph. I mean, 47,448 views on one day! And I thought my little numbers were picking up!
4. Why “sexy”? I mean, I see the changes you’ve made. But I need more elaboration on the sexy part.
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It IS super sexy, and ditching Flash is a definite plus, but, like a few other commenters, I must say I preferred the line graph, as it made it easier to see how my page views were trending over time.
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Three versions in two weeks.
1) the old one: good, simple and a little “charm”;
2) the mid one: not so good, simple and no “charme” (but something was happening, it was clear to everyone);
3) the new and actual one: very good, very simple and with a great “charme”… nice shoot guys!
Thank you 🙂
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I like the bar charts instead of lines, but on my screen on the site stats page, all the boxes are underneath each other instead of being two in each row, so I have to scroll down to see my stats each time, is there any way to alter the width of the boxes?
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This should be fixed. Please contact Support if you are still having trouble.
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Hi! My friends using Blogspot are able to see how many people have read their blogs from each different country in the world…can I do this on WordPress? If not, please could you add this function? I’d really like to see some info about who is reading my blog!
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hi,can anyone tell me i can track the ip address of who views my blog?
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No, you can’t.
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No, you can’t.
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Excellent, now my iPad app is worth using.
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Why not having the option to change between “Today” “Yesterday” “Week” “Month”?
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I like the bar graph more, it’s more clear.
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I really think the new way of presentation of the stats is really better for the eyes…By the way it looks more up to date and friendly for stat-addicted-people. This is not a sickness, you hear this is blogging. We don´t need all those sharp stats.
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Ah, I was having problems with the stats not loading, but this seems to be fixed too. And yes the charts are sexy. However on a very wide screen resolution (1920×1080) everything is a bit too wide (not literaly but it feels akward).
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Is there a way to turn it back to the lines, because I much prefer that graph look (everything else is fine though).
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I prefer the old ones, where you can see the all the hits right away. one of the few fails from wordpress imo.
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Thanks guy! This is way better…. Its just much easier to see your traffic, much more compact for quicker and more efficient viewing. Thanks again, this is why I use wordpress! GREAT features and always making upgrades!
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uh oh. Wrong move! trends over time are supposed to be shown as lines. categories (apples, bananas, oranges) are supposed to be shown as bars. You just lost some credibility. 😦
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YES. I also like the new look stats. Keep on improving.
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Frrrrankly, I liked the scatter-plot type of stats chart rather than the bars….. Granted, the bars are A HECK OF A LOT faster….
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I do like the gray for weekends and possibility that I can access this data on my smartphone (I think?).
I don’t like the bars, I liked the old graph MUCH MORE, better sense of “up and down” from day to day and over time. The bars are too fat and the scale makes it difficult to interpret the change over time, which is what I’m interested in.
Also, I miss seeing the two-day info all on the page; clicking between days makes it more difficult to compare yesterday from today.
I don’t like tabbing between info that is small and could all fit on the main page, eg, why has “shares” suddenly become its own tab when it is easily summarized as one number.
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I like more the bars. Thanks!
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I preferred the other one. Much easier to look at, in terms of weekly/yearly stats.
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I agree with gregtheoharis on this. The lines were good and if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Plus, my stats looked a lot more impressive in terms of the amount of people who have viewed my posts before the bar graphs. So thanks for that.
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Don’t like it. I want to see yesterday and today info on same page without clicking. Also lines and dots are much easier to scan quickly – and new bar lines are far too fat. Why not give us an option of bars or dots/lines, also an option on how many days, weeks months appear in the graphs? Hope you can do that.
On points above that we’ll get used to bar lines, you can get used to anything but that doesn’t make it good!
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LOVE it. Makes checking stats soo much easier! Thanks!
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Much prefer the connected points than the bars. Any chance we can get a choice in the matter and configure the stat view as we want?
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Nice change. Thanks for continually tweaking.
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I am a statistician. The days are not continuous like line chart but who cares?, it gives a better view of peak and trough than a bar chart could. I want my line charts back.
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Took me a while to get used to, haha, but I like it.
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Bar charts definitely an improvement, as with other commenters am not wild about the rest of the changes which seem a bit clunky. However, that is a minor point. Being URL-based, the stats are useful for showing how many times specific posts have been read (i.e. a link clicked). This is interesting information, as it tells me about the extent to which posts are being picked up by other blogs / twitter etc. But it doesn’t tell me how much they are being read. Two problems: (a) not all RSS readers (e.g. Omea Reader) download the smiley, so their visits are missing, and, critically, (b) a lot of page views are to the home page. Please could you investigate stats based on text being queried from the database or something like that which would break down these number. At the very least it would be nice to know which was the top post when the home page was viewed.
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I’m really not a fan of the bar graph at all – it’s far too chunky and difficult to read, plus getting a sense of trends is difficult.
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I like everything except the bar chart look. Just a personal preference I know but have always detested bar charts. They remind me too much of mathematical underachievements at school I guess 😀
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Once I got used to the difference and readjusting how I look at that page, I agree that the bars are easier to read. That is probably a personal preference for many though. I do wish there was a better way to see where people are coming from. My Referrers box is never even close to the total number of hits for each day.
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Many visitors come from search engines or visit directly.
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Sorry, I really believe strongly there needs to be an option to see a line chart as well – trends are simply not as easily visible in a bar chart as they are in a line chart. And I too like to be able to see how my subscripers are griowing at a glance.
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Do we know when these changes will be carried over to externally hosted wordpress sites?
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No ETA yet.
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Nick, the baseline figure for a data point, such as zero views per day or a stock price of 11.12, has nothing to do with what type of graph you use to display the statistical information. Ideally, the vertical and horizontal axis will show even spacing for the range of data being displayed. I’m referring to your remark to shekharonline.
Are you noting a trend in your comments? Assuming that your moderator is unbiased, then laymen prefer bar graphs, while the people who really use and understand statistics prefer the line graphs.
Do you want to go for “sexy”, or do you want to provide easy, meaningful data? Yeah, yeah, I know I can extract the data from the center of each bar and construct my own line graph. What a pain, when I know that you had a program that did this automatically!
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Bars: like
Your stats compared to mine: …..dislike….
Thanks for doing what you all do!
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While I agree with some that the “sexy stats” perspective took a bit of getting used to, I love, love, love it… not because I’ve always gravitated toward bar graphs but because the page layout is sooo easy to use! Like, wow! A place for everything, and everything in its place.
Moreover, this pea brain thinks stats are tres, tres cool, so your sexy stats page is the cat’s me-owww…
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Will take some time for me getting used to it. 😀
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One request – on the weekly – any chance that instead of “week 39” you could put week ending xxx date ? Personally I have no clue when the heck week 39 was, nor does my calendar tell me, and when I’m trying to count back more than a few weeks… ugh. Otherwise, happy, with bar charts, etc. One other thought – as you re-think the details, especially referrals – any chance of lumping, for example, all facebook referrals? As is, I get one listing for each person, I suppose who clicked from their personal home page, it would be huge help if you can count up for total 49 from Facebook or something… Thanks very much, so far so good!
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Instead of aesthetic changes to make it look “sexy,” how about some simple functional upgrades like tracking WHERE our visitors are coming from?
If we’re paying $25 annually to blog on WordPress, we should at least be allowed to put up a SiteMeter code or another third-party tracking device. It’s not fair to be completely unable to see what cities and countries our tourists are visiting from.
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There isn’t a $25 fee. WordPress.com is free. We are working on more updates for stats.
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I found the line graphs easier to read at-a-glance. A ‘trend line’ toggle or option to switch to a line graph view would be much appreciated. Thank you for working to improve things like this though – altho I’m not a big fan of the bars I appreciate the service in general very much.
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It’s definitely new. I like it, but it’s going to take some time to get used to!
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I noticed right away! This is great! Thanks for the sexy stats update 🙂 😉
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This is not an improvement, but a regression. Bar charts are really un-aesthetic imho. It’s a pity we can’t choose to keep the former stats visualization 😦
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Love the sexy new stats look – now, what are the chances of getting unique visits information? Yes, give inch get asked for mile. 🙂
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(With the caveat that I know I’m moaning about a free service…)
I preferred the line graph to the bar chart, but that’s not a big deal for me. The annoying part is having to click on a tab for info that was previously readily available. I really can’t see why that is supposed to be ‘sexy’.
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Any future plans for giving us control of which types of charts we want to see? Or an easy way to dump the data so that we could use our own charting tools?
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There is an API to access all of the stats. See http://stats.wordpress.com/csv.php
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Best of all, the work on my iDevices!
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Loving the new look stats page!!!!
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*does happy dance*
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I much preferred the old stats format — the new ones bother my eyes and I’m peeved the change was forced on me without warning. Can you devise a way of allowing people to return to the old version if they so choose? Thanks.
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