wpadmin – Page 2

17 Feb

Website Metrics

Website metrics/analytics are essential for you to be aware and informed as to how your website is performing. There are a number of ways to glean how your website is performing, from the “free” services from the Big Internet companies such as Google Analytics, Bing Analytics and Yandex Metrica, paid metrics from a third party vendor, to self hosted metrics software like Piwik/Matomo, and log file analytics from Webalizer or awstats.

My advice is always to use a couple of these, most hosting packages provide a log file analyser as part of the service so you may as well have this configured, however you really need more deep analysis also provided in a graphical format which you can do comparisons etc. and Google Analytics is the monolith in this, if you are using Microsoft products/services a lot or Yandex then their Metrics could be a benefit, or if you even want to compare or proof the results found by the other metric provider.

Links

11 Feb

Election Coverage Online and TV Graphics

I must say I was impressed with both the data and graphics on both RTE TV and Website, in delivering, the 2020 Irish General Election Results. The data as counts go by was very good although I would like the transfers to perhaps be shaded in the color of the party person they come from.

There was a high bar set in the 2016 US Election by CNN by their graphics and drill down data, and using Microsoft surface. It is easier to get this binary nature of a US election to color code drill down regions than in a fractured multi-party system.

09 Feb

HupSpot Content Marketing Certified

A Yellow or Orange Storm warning from the Met Office over the weekend, the election results on in the background so I went through the course and renewed/retook, it had expired last year, I like the HubSpot courses but some of them are very video-heavy, some of it is quite intuitive.

06 Feb

Inbound Certified Renewed – HubSpot Academy

This was up for renewal, I started it a month ago going through videos, it is technically a new course to replace the one I did back in 2018 (which was the 2017 course), they seem to have divided the course into two now and I have started and pretty much finished the “Inbound Sales” by accident, however, I did complete the second part the “Inbound Marketing” course as well.
Anyways I did the exams for the Inbound and Inbound marketing and got the badges/certs, it seems to be more intuitive that when I first completed it, perhaps it is easier perhaps I am better.. I do like that it is 25 months, means they will diverge and give you a more spread out timeframe to renew all your certs in future and if i have time I will do the Inbound sales one since it is nigh complete.

05 Feb

Google Tag Manager Fundamentals

Continuing on with my MOOCs and within Google Analytics Academy, I went through the Google Tag Manager Fundamentals course. I have only used Tag Manager on a couple of projects, mostly to manage using a combination of different trackers from different metrics providers. So it was a real insight into the power of tag manager used dovetailing with Analytics and indeed Adwords. I do note that Analytics Academy has 3 more courses that I intend to do time allowing, including the pre-cursor to the 1st one I did the other day.

Google Tag Manager Fundamentals

04 Feb

Introduction to Google Data Studio

Another one down, I have produced reports over the years using a variety of tools from Spreadsheets, SQL*Calc, SQL*Plus, Php and MySql and Google Charts. Google Data Studio seems a nice way to produced reports (Perhaps it should be called Google Reports;) ) especially from .csv files I would think. Anyways as part of my Online resources / Courses trawl, I competed the Google Analytics Academy Introduction to Data Studio Course. I did like some of the lessons were clickable demos rather than videos, which can get a bit monotonous. I also think perhaps these Analytics Academy “courses” could be badges on one overall course like the Digital Garage cert.

Google Data Studio

03 Feb

Advanced Google Analytics (Google Analytics Academy)

I went through some of the online course videos and took the assignments on Google Analytics Academy, I really was doing the coursework to do the Analytics Individual Qualification which I need to renew. You do get a snazzy certificate. Google perhaps should have a one-stop shop for all their courses rather than having them spread over Digital Garage, Skills Shop ExceedLMS, and Analytics Academy.

Advanced Google Analytics

01 Feb

Google Ads Search Certification

I completed the Google Ads (formerly Adwords) Search Certification there. Again these are certs that have an expiry date, and a number of them have lapsed on me so I plan to work through them.

Google Ads Search Cert

20 Jan

Update to WordPress 5.3.2

After some waiting to see WordPress 5 bed in

I updated to WordPress 5.3.2 so far so good, I had to update a number of plugins including shortcodes for the WordPress theme. Installed both the old classic editor and have used the new “blocks” editor Gutenberg which for me the jury is still out on.

As it had been a few months since a full CMS update I had to update translations, and themes as well.

Microsoft stopping support for Windows 7

This is something which annoys me, while I am not a user of it, I have had a number of friends ask me what to do, the simple answer I give is you need to update if you are sticking with it and if you are confident try and install Linux, Ubuntu or Linux Mint I would suggest.

Perhaps if a software provider stop support for a platform, then it should be released as some sort of open source (ok not to copy but to maintain)

04 Jan

Online Courses and Certs etc.

A number of years ago I made a new years resolution to do an Online Course whenever I had time on my hands, my plan was to update or get new courses, certs for the likes of Google, and Microsoft, some of which I had had but had lapsed, and some newer ones from HubSpot and LinkedIn, etc. As they were New years resolutions, and done over time off at Christmas, etc. a lot of them have expired and I plan to work through them and renew some of them over the coming months.

I especially think the google and hubspot courses and certs, are good, since if you use these tools, you do learn things and about them that you may not have known or have been using to their potential.