Yep, artsfish is going Meta. Happy holidays - a free round of stats for everyone!!!  Yes , you can find out if people are visiting your posts - by installing a very simple auto-generated invisible HTML code at the end of each post. All stats are accessible only to you and you will not have a "hit counter"  visible anywhere on your posts. 

 I know that there's been mention of access to individual stats in the future, but in the meantime I 'm going to tell you how you can have that now. OS is getting huge, and it's hard to know sometimes if anyone is out there reading our posts. I've been tracking basic stats on many of my posts for a couple of months now, and what I've found is that there are quite a few visitors that don't leave a comment or a rating. Why? Because many visitors are not OS members.

One of the first posts that I kept stats on was my Wanderlust Germany; Cologne Cathedral snapshots post, which garnered a few ratings and comments, but it also chalked up close to 600 unique visitors in the first 24 hours. Someone Stumbled the post. Because of the Stumble link most of the visitors were not OS members, so they could not leave comments or rate. However, it was nice to know that the post had been seen by so many visitors. I've seen similar stats on other posts. 

Stats on OS 101

I use StatCounter, which is free, It's somewhat like Google Analytics without all the bells and whistles. You don't need the bells and whistles. Trust me. It also gives you the option to use only HTML rather than javascript. The OS editor will filter out any java (most likely this is done to prevent conflicts on the server). Try it if you don't believe me - put any java code in the OS HTML editor box and click "update". Then open the box and check again. POOF! it's gone! 

If you don't know what Javascript is, don't worry. You don't need it.

Once you set up an account in StatCounter, you'll need to create a project for each post you want to track.  

You cannot do this until you "publish" your post because you will need the actual URL for your post.

On the main StatCounter page click on "Add New Project" at the top of the page and you'll be taken to an interface that will automatically configure the tracking code for your post. You will see; 

  1) Website Title - make up a short title to tell you what post it is. No one but you will see this

2) Website URL - Copy and paste the complete URL (web address) for you published post here

3) Chose a category - I'm not sure what the usefulness of this is, but you can't click "next" until you do

4) Timezone - select your timezone

 5) Ignore the rest and click the "Next" button at the bottom  

6) You will now see a "Congratulations! Your Project has been  created! page. Click on the "CONFIGURE & INSTALL CODE" button. 

7) The next page will ask you "What kind of StatCounter Code do you need?"  Click the  INVISIBLE COUNTER option.

8) You're almost done.  Now you are at the "Installation Options" Page;

 Make sure that you choose "Default Install Guide" and click the checkbox on the  "OPTIONAL-HTML ONLY COUNTER". Leave the last box blank and click the "Next" button. 

9)  You will see  a window labeled "Your StatCounter Code:". Highlight all of the text within the window  with your mouse and copy.

10) Go to Open Salon's "Manage Posts" and choose "Edit" next to the post that you have created this code for. Click on the    button and paste the code at the very end of your post. If you do any future editing, you will need to check the HTML box to make sure you have not obliterated your code. If you do, it's not a problem. You can always retreive the code again from StatCounter.

11) Now go to the  StatCounter  MyProjects page and find the "blocking cookie" option and create a blocking cookie so that you don't log your own visits.  Do this after every project. 

 You're done! 

 In print this sounds like a lot, but I assure you it isn't. Once you get the hang of it you can generate a tracking code in a couple of minutes. You will need a new code for every post you want to track.

Once you have your code installed you will be able to see a variety of stats ranging from a basic summary page to a clickable map showing where visitors are from. 

 Enjoy! Now you can say - Hey! Someone IS finding my post! 

 UPDATE; I've just made the stats for this post public, click here to see them.  This will show you the range of stats you will be able to access. Note - no one else will have access to your stats unless you configure the option;

" Control User Access and Public Stats - Only allow specific users access to this project and enable/disable public stats."

 If you leave this unconfigured all your stats will remain private